Mark Kleinman is Sky News’ City Editor and the man who gets the Square Mile talking in his weekly City AM column
Reeves heads outside in hunt for new banking watchdog
File it under ‘Rachel Reeves’s headaches’. A search for Britain’s top banking regulator is about to get underway, and the word in Whitehall is that the chancellor has a clear idea of the type of person who should succeed Sam Woods.
As I reported at the weekend, the Treasury is about to kick off a search for a replacement for Woods, whose second four-year term as chief executive of the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) comes to an end next year.
Woods has proved an able hand at the tiller during a period in which Brexit and the Covid pandemic posed a series of stiff post-financial challenges for banking watchdogs.
Amid a wider deregulatory push by Sir Keir Starmer’s administration, however, there have been persistent suggestions that the chancellor has been frustrated by a perception of foot-dragging at the PRA.
Treasury sources say that where the Financial Conduct Authority’s chief executive, Nikhil Rathi, has moved to overhaul the City watchdog’s approach to diluting the regulatory burden on firms (in exchange, it should be said, for a second term in charge), Reeves has held a belief that the PRA has not gone far, or fast, enough.
The Treasury declines to comment on that premise, but if there’s even a modicum of truth to it, it probably weighs against the chances of internal candidates to replace Woods. Top of that list would be David Bailey, executive director for prudential policy, who joined the Bank of England in 2014. Reeves, it is said, would favour an external candidate to head the PRA, to drive forward a pro-growth agenda more aggressively.
A senior overseas regulatory figure is also an option. In recent weeks, senior Barclays executive Katharine Braddick’s name has circulated in chatter about potential external candidates. Braddick joined Barclays in 2022 after a stint as the Treasury’s director-general for financial services – and one City insider says her being picked for the role would be “astonishing, given that the government is committed to attempting to unravel the cobweb of red tape implemented on her watch at the Treasury”. If she does apply, Reeves will need to decide whether three years outside the UK regulatory orbit is ‘outside’ enough.
Will Waterstones open a new chapter for London listings?
What do Gymshark, Starling and Waterstones have in common? Other than being consumer-facing, British-born brands, the answer would appear to be not much – until this week.
On Monday, the trio – along with a further quartet which included fintechs Oaknorth and True Potential – met Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, City minister Lucy Rigby and Alex Depledge, the tech entrepreneur who now advises Reeves, for talks about the state of the London IPO environment.
It’s hardly a secret that the subject is an urgent one – hence the chancellor’s decision to launch yet another talking shop in the shape of a listings taskforce in her Mansion House speech earlier this year.
Beyond warm words, though, those at Monday’s meeting came away with little sense of nettles being grasped. Attendees called for further reforms to listing rules, tax incentives and regulatory oversight to stimulate a flow of IPOs, and it would be surprising if the chancellor did not mix some cocktail of these to present in the ‘growth’ section of next month’s Budget.
Indeed, Beauty Tech Group, Princes Group and Shawbrook Group have collectively injected a fresh sense of momentum into what had become a near-dormant new issues market – so much so that Rigby was in the pages of City AM yesterday declaring that London was open for business again.
Here’s a prediction, though: of the seven companies in attendance at Monday’s breakfast meeting, I’d put money on only two – True Potential and Starling – ultimately going public in London. David Lloyd Leisure is likely to remain private for (much) longer, having seen its owner just agree to establish a continuation vehicle, while Oaknorth, Gymshark, CFC Underwriting and Waterstones all look riper for New York or European listings than in the UK.
Winvia float might unlock a £200m jackpot for owner Sagi
Talk about hitting the jackpot. The latest London IPO candidate is Winvia, an operator of prize draws which competes with rivals such as Omaze. At the mooted £200m valuation, it would deliver a decent paper windfall for Teddy Sago, the gaming entrepreneur who is its majority shareholder.
Winvia operates prize draws and competition websites such as BOTB.com – which stands for Best of the Best, and offers homes, cars and cash prizes – and as I reported on Sky News last week, initial conversations with institutional investors have produced a positive response.
I now understand that Jo Bucci, a former executive at The Sun, Leicester City Football Club and Capital Radio who is now overseeing the digital transformation of The Jewish Chronicle, the world’s oldest Jewish newspaper, as its chief executive, is being lined up as Winvia’s chair.
Her prior experience as managing director of the People’s Postcode Lottery, which generated an annual turnover of £450m on her watch, made her an obvious candidate to steer Winvia through ts public market debut, according to people close to the company.
And with the proceeds of an IPO to be earmarked to fund acquisitions in a sector which is ripe for consolidation, Bucci and Winvia’s management team could make the company an intriguing small-cap to watch when it makes its debut.