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Tikehau, one of Europe’s fastest-growing investment managers, is considering moving its listing to New York from Paris, making it the latest in a series of European and UK companies looking beyond the exchanges in their home countries.
The €47.1bn alternative asset manager, which is particularly strong in private credit, was founded in 2004 and has been listed on Euronext Paris since 2017. Founders Mathieu Chabran and Antoine Flamarion have long expressed ambitions to build a “Blackstone of Europe”.
They told the Financial Times on Tuesday they were considering moving their listing or seeking a secondary listing in New York to tap more liquid US markets, and to boost their brand at a time when money management was consolidating and individual customers were supplanting institutional investors as the most important source of growth.
“Building the brand takes a lot of time and energy. If you get listed in the US, because finance has been invented here, it probably makes sense to do it from a brand perspective,” Flamarion said.
“We are spending time on” whether to go for a primary listing in the US or add a secondary listing in New York, said Chabran, who has been based in New York since 2018.
They have plenty of company. Swedish fintech Klarna recently filed for a US initial public offering and French oil major TotalEnergies said in April that it was seriously considering moving its listing to New York. Two European companies supplying products and services into the fast-growing US energy market, Switzerland’s Landis + Gyr and Italy’s Prysmian, have also told the FT they are evaluating New York listings.
This year, record highs for US stock markets have helped companies raise more than $30bn by floating in New York, including $1.8bn for Switzerland-headquartered Viking Cruises, compared with less than $18bn for groups listing in Europe, according to data from Dealogic. Last year, two of the three biggest US IPOs were UK-based chip designer Arm Holdings and German fashion group Birkenstock.
In an effort to boost the appeal of Europe, exchange operator Euronext this month said it planned to create a single US-style prospectus across its seven bourses to simplify the listing process. France has been advocating deeper capital markets integration across the EU to rival the US, but efforts have floundered.
Tikehau, named after a Pacific coral atoll in French Polynesia, is behind rival French alternatives firm Ardian, which has $176bn in assets under management. But Tikehau has been striking deals and partnerships to expand its reach and fuel international expansion. It had 17 offices and 767 employees as of September 30.
Last year the firm secured €400mn in backing from two of the founding families of beer giant AB InBev, who became indirect minority shareholders of Tikehau Capital, the listed entity. It also signed a strategic partnership with Nikko Asset Management, one of Asia’s largest asset managers, that included a distribution agreement for Nikko to sell Tikehau’s products in Asia.
Tikehau has €3.1bn of equity on its balance sheet as of June 30, which it uses to invest alongside clients in each of its strategies. The company’s founders, management and strategic investors, which include Temasek and Morgan Stanley, collectively own 74 per cent of the listed entity.
Prysmian also sees the US market as a stronger driver of growth than Europe and is working to overcome some technical legal barriers in Italy that would make a dual listing tricky. Massimo Battaini, its chief executive, said the company wanted to boost its presence and exposure in the US.
“With the exposure and the growth rate that we see in the US in the next few years we can benefit from a dual listing,” he said in an interview.