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Fintech Wise goes public in London, but in a decidedly American fashion

Fortune

In the first ever direct listing of a tech company on the LSE, the company was valued at a market capitalization of £8 billion ($11 billion), making a big splash in the burgeoning U.K. fintech market following the country’s rocky exit from the European Union.

The listing at 11 a.m. on Wednesday was met with strong investor appetite, with bids ranging from 100p to 1,000p for shares priced at 800p (about $11).

The founders of the company took the company public using a direct listing, which does not involve raising new capital or bringing in new investors like in a formal IPO process. As such, the price was determined through an extended three-hour opening auction, rather than through a traditional book-building process in which a company’s bankers ask institutional investors in the days before the IPO to submit bids for the number of shares and the price they would be willing to pay.

File:New Wise (formerly TransferWise) logo.svg - Wikimedia Commons

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