Specialist lender Shawbrook is preparing to announce intention of its London Stock Exchange debut – a move which could take place as soon as Thursday next week.
Shawbrook’s private equity owner – Pollen Street Capital – is eying a £2bn valuation for the firm from the transaction.
It comes amid a dire outlook for the London Stock Exchange (LSE) after data this week revealed it had fallen as low as 23rd in the global ranking of IPO destinations.
A mere £184m was raised on the LSE in the first nine months of the year – falling drastically short of the £17bn in 2021, and making 2025 the worst year for listings in over three decades.
But City officials will be hoping a successful Shawbrook float could open the floodgates to a batch of new listing candidates.
Investment bank Cavendish – the market leader for AIM-listed firms – said in an updated earlier this week there was a solid “pipeline of both public and private transactions including potential IPOs and ongoing public M&A activity”.
Shawbrook owner eye expansion
The news, first reported by the Financial Times, comes after Pollen Street has been hungry for expansion for Shawbrook for some time.
The bank’s owner had been exploring multiple pathways for the lender over the last year including a £5bn merger with UK fintech Starling and a potential takeover of high street lender Metro Bank.
In its half-year report Shawbrook recorded a 35 per cent jump in profit before tax to £168.6m as its loan book grew 14 per cent to £17bn.
Deposits were also up 11 per cent to £16.7bn, compared to £15.8bn at the end of 2024.
Shawbrook’s CET1 ratio – a crucial indicator of its financial health – edged up 0.1 per cent as the lender strengthened its core capital.
Marcelino Castrillo, chief executive of Shawbrook, said the lender expected further growth across its four core segments of SMEs, real estate, retail mortgages and consumer.
Castrillo added the firm had begun to embed AI across operations with the “enhancements” helping to reduce the bank’s cost of risk – a key metric indicating total expected losses from credit defaults, operational failures, and other risks – shrinking to 42 basis points.