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Investment group Petershill Partners has announced plans to delist from the London Stock Exchange, saying that it is undervalued as a public company, in the latest setback for UK capital markets.
The company, which was founded in 2007 by Goldman Sachs, said on Thursday that it would return more than $900mn to shareholders as part of its exit from the stock market.
Following a strategic review and several efforts to boost its share price, Petershill said it had concluded that the market “did not appropriately reflect the quality and underlying value of the Company’s assets, its strong financial performance and attractive growth prospects”.
Petershill, which owns minority stakes in several alternative asset managers and billed its 2021 initial public offering as a means for investors to gain exposure to private equity, has struggled as a public company.
Shares in Petershill, which is majority owned by funds run by Goldman’s asset management arm, have fallen by a third since it listed in September 2021.
As part of the planned delisting, Petershill, which manages $351bn in assets, said it would return $4.15 per share in cash to shareholders, along with an interim dividend of $0.052.
Following the announcement, Petershill shares soared by a third in early trading in London to 308.5p.
The company’s departure from the LSE comes as the exchange operator and the government seek to increase the appeal of London as a listing destination for companies.
Fundraisings from London IPOs in the first half of the year slumped to just £160mn, the lowest total for the January to June period in at least 30 years, according to Dealogic data.
