Downing street launches charm offensive to woo Klarna into London listing
Downing Street is attempting to woo buy-now pay-later giant Klarna into a London-listing over fears that high-growth tech firms may snub the City for New York, according to reports.
Ministers have launched a charm offensive on the firm and have met with Klarna bosses at Number 10, alongside a number of Europe’s largest tech firms, where they touted the City’s post-Brexit credentials, The Telegraph first reported.
Boris Johnson was reportedly supposed to chair the meeting virtually but was forced to back out to address the House of Commons on the findings of Sue Gray’s report.
The guest-list of high-valuation fintechs tallied up to total valuation of $102bn and featured names including payments business Checkout.com, which recently became the UK’s most valuable start-up; lender Oaknorth, and money-transfer firm, Zepz.
Romi Savova, boss of PensionBee, the online pension provider, and the chief executive of Oxford Nanopore, the biotech company, were brought to the meeting as examples of high growth innovation firms that had successfully floated in London.
The meeting comes after an overhaul to the UK’s listing regime last year to try and tempt more high-growth firms to list in London.
The measures include dual-class share structure which allow founders to retain more control of their business after flotation.