Mark Kleinman is Sky News’ City Editor and the man who gets the Square Mile talking in his weekly City AM column. This week, he tackles a nice payday for the Monzo boss, an unlikely friendship, and the great British export that is the Premier League.
Bravery or foolhardiness? Klarna’s decision to press the button on a US initial public offering in the midst of market volatility which has no end in sight could be deemed either – depending upon how successfully it lands on Nasdaq in the coming weeks.
The Trump effect means, though, that other US IPOs slated for the first half of the year, including the fintech platform Chime, are now likely to be pushed back until the latter part of 2025.
That won’t, I suspect, go unnoticed in the City headquarters of Monzo, which has made little secret of its plan for an eventual flotation but which is not even in the preliminary stages of formal preparations for one.
Certainly the debate in its boardroom – referred to here and in other media reporting in recent months – about a listing venue is likely to be intimately shaped by President Trump’s second term in the White House.
Unquestionably, without a meaningful presence in the US retail banking sector, Monzo would be a fish out of water if it listed in New York. And while a sizeable US acquisition has been among Monzo’s boardroom deliberations, a concrete deal has yet to materialise and shows little sign of doing so in the near future, according to fintech bankers.
Notwithstanding that, I hear it’s not all gloom for TS Anil, the company’s chief executive. Anil landed a substantial payday in Monzo’s recent secondary share sale, apparently selling more than $10m of stock as part of the deal (which valued the neobank at about £4.5bn). That’s a pittance by contrast with the hundreds of millions of dollars that Revolut founder Nik Storonsky yielded from its secondary share sale (now closed with over $1bn of stock having changed hands, according to people close to the company), but a handsome windfall by anybody else’s standards.
Along with executives from Affirm, Revolut and Zilch, Anil was among the attendees at a fintech roundtable hosted by Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, last week. The question among Monzo-watchers is whether he can be persuaded to become as enthusiastic a cheerleader for London’s capital markets as she is trying to be.
Banks and Which? join forces in the fraud squad
It takes a lot to unite Britain’s biggest banks and its best-known consumer campaign group – but that’s what a long-awaited government crackdown on online fraud appears to have done.
In a letter to the home secretary, chancellor and science secretary this week, UK Finance and Which? argued that voluntary initiatives introduced to date “have had no meaningful impact on the scale of fraud”.
They urged the triumvirate of cabinet ministers to pursue the technology and telecoms sectors for an update on their efforts to prevent online consumers being defrauded – with such an update having been demanded by this month.
“Almost £1.2bn was stolen by criminals through payment fraud in 2023, equivalent to over £2,000 every minute,” UK Finance and Which? said in their letter. “The economic impact of this is significant, eroding consumer trust in digital markets, dampening small business productivity and profits and diverting money away from our economy and into the hands of organised crime.”
The groups also highlighted Sir Keir Starmer’s pre-election call for major tech companies to play a bigger role in combating online fraud, saying they needed to have a “clear obligation” and “financial incentive” to tackle what has become a digital epidemic.
UK Finance and Which? now want Ofcom to reverse a delay to the implementation of codes for paid-for fraudulent advertising, and for the government to require tech and telecoms companies to contribute to the cost of reimbursing fraud victims.
The banks (and Which?) have a valid argument; but at a time when the US tech-focused Digital Services Tax is under review amid Britain’s attempts to dilute Donald Trump’s potential sanctions, applying more financial pressure to Big Tech is unlikely to be uppermost in the chancellor’s mind.
Adobe deal shows Premier League’s ability to keep scoring
Guinness, Microsoft, Coca-Cola and now Adobe: the Premier League’s apparently inexorable ability to draw global brands as commercial partners continues unabated.
At today’s meeting of shareholders in English football’s top flight, the 20 member clubs – including Arsenal, Bournemouth, Liverpool and Wolverhampton Wanderers – will be asked to sign off multimillion pound deals with the latter two companies.
The deals fill gaps in the Premier League’s sponsorship roster, and will add Adobe to a growing list of technology partners, according to people close to the talks. (One source said the new deals would only be formally discussed at today’s clubs meeting if sufficient progress had been made in negotiations with the two companies, while a spokesman for the Premier League declined to comment.)
The rest of today’s agenda will be thornier to navigate, with a discussion about the league’s proposed Squad Cost Ratio rules and the continuing uncertainty caused by Manchester City’s legal salvos against the competition hanging over discussions.
One insider describes the meeting as “routine”, but like a certain Samuel Beckett play, the protracted process to appoint chiefs to run English football’s new regulator provides a further backdrop which is anything but routine.
With a shortlist for the chair role still standing at three candidates and no end in sight, perhaps the sport’s latest drama should be titled ‘Waiting for Purslow’.