Could Motorway be set for a blockbuster London IPO?
The chief executive and co-founder of UK technology unicorn Motorway has spoken out about whether his company will choose London for a possible future initial public offering (IPO).
Speaking on the latest episode of CityAM‘s Boardroom Uncovered show, Tom Leathes opened up about the chances of Motorway going public on the London Stock Exchange.
The main market has come under pressure in recent years following a number of high profile exits and a fall in the number of companies completing IPOs.
The UK has also seen a series of its technology giants be snapped up by US companies or choose to list in New York instead of London.
Motorway boss hoping for ‘exciting liquidity events’
On the possibility of Motorway going public in the future, Leathes said: “We don’t have any specific landmarks that we’re working towards.
“Obviously, in time, we hope that there will be exciting liquidity events for investors, for the team and so on.
“An IPO probably is what we would like to see happen because it would mean that we can but that’s just a landmark on the journey.
“We continue building whether or not we list in the UK or somewhere else is not really something we think about. But… there are a lot of challenges in that.
“We have not seen a huge amount of knock out successes.
“I would say the bigger focus should be earlier on in that funnel, less on getting that, you know, X number of scale-ups to choose London to list on, but get more people starting businesses in the first place.
“Help them scale and help them get beyond this phase of small-to-medium-sized start-ups and get people’s ambitions to be much larger than that because the rest will work itself out.”
When asked what London has to do to convince him to pick it over New York or Amsterdam or elsewhere, he said: It’s not something we’re thinking about massively at the moment.
“We’re focusing on just building the best business we can, delivering for customers. And again, the rest will sort of work itself out at the right time.”