Challenger bank Aldermore employees get shares windfall on £651 million IPO
The bank said in a regulatory statement that the share windfall will be a reward after the upstart lender, which was only founded in 2009, makes it onto the London stock market with a market capitalisation of £651 million ($983 million).
"I would also like to personally thank all of my colleagues for their hard work and commitment," said Phillip Monks, CEO at Aldermore in a regulatory statement. "Something all the team shares is an enormous sense of pride in how we serve our growing number of customers and the achievements we have made so far.
"To demonstrate our gratitude, and to ensure all of our team can participate in our future success, I'm delighted to announce that we will be awarding Aldermore shares of up to £1,000 in value to each of our employees."
Aldermore confirmed in a regulatory statement that it would release 34.8 % of its equity to the public, which translate as 117,934,783 ordinary shares at 192 pence per share. Currently, this would value Aldermore at £651 million.
"This is an exciting moment for Aldermore. The success of our IPO is testament to the strength of our story as a legacy-free bank focused on providing banking services to SMEs and homeowners," said Monks in a statement.
"It's also a clear demonstration that the investment community shares our confidence in our ability to continue delivering profitable and sustainable growth for our investors.
"We believe that becoming a listed company will further support our development by allowing us to provide flexible and straightforward products and customer-focused banking services to British SMEs and homeowners."
In 2014, small and medium enterprise (SME) deposits rocketed by 97% to £1 billion in its online deposit franchise, while regular customer online deposits jumped by 29% to £4.5 billion. It now has 50,000 SME customers in total to date.
Lending to SMEs also surged by a third to £2.2bn in 2014 while net loans to customers jumped 42% to £4.8bn, compared to the previous year.