Revolut, Britain’s most valuable fintech, is lining up Morgan Stanley to coordinate a sale of up to £400 million worth of shares in the company, Sky News understands.
Bosses at Revolut, Britain’s biggest fintech, are drawing up plans to allow employees to make money from selling shares worth hundreds of millions of pounds.
Sky News has learned that the banking and payments services provider is lining up investment bankers to coordinate a secondary share sale worth around $500 million (£394 million).
Morgan Stanley, the Wall Street bank, is expected to be brought in to work on the proposed stock offering, which will take place later this year.
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City sources said this weekend that Revolut co-founder and CEO Nik Storonsky was committed to pursuing a valuation of at least the $33 billion it raised in a 2021 primary funding round.
“This will not be a downward spiral,” said one person familiar with Revolut’s thinking.
Although the fintech, which has more than 40 million customers, does not plan to raise new capital as part of the transaction, any significant share sale in the global fintech sector will still be closely watched.
It is expected that this will be limited to company employees.
Revolut is among the largest financial technology companies in the world, with revenues almost doubling last year to around £1.7 billion, according to figures expected to be published in the coming months.
The company, founded in 2015, has faced a series of regulatory and compliance challenges, with reports last year highlighting the release of funds from accounts flagged as suspicious by the National Crime Agency.
The company’s growth has been rapid, with its customer base increasing from 16.4 million at the time of its Series E fundraising nearly three years ago.
Insiders argued that despite the prolonged decline in technology valuations over the past two years, Revolut’s relentless expansion could easily justify retaining its status as Britain’s most valuable fintech.
Monzo, the British digital bank, recently confirmed a Sky News story that it had completed a funding round worth nearly £500 million, including backing from an arm of Google’s owner, Alphabet, and a Singaporean sovereign wealth fund.
Elsewhere, however, the funding landscape has been bleaker, with a growing number of tech companies with unicorn valuations above $1 billion now struggling to stay afloat.
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Revolut has granted stock options to many of its 10,000 employees as part of their compensation packages, although it was unclear how many of them would be eligible to offload shares in the transaction later this year.
A source close to the company said it had received numerous expressions of interest from potential investors.
Revolut’s current shareholders include SoftBank’s Vision Fund and Tiger Global.
News of the proposed share sale comes as Revolut’s investors continue to wait for positive news on its UK banking license application.
The company applied to regulators to become a bank in Britain more than three years ago, but has not yet received approval.
Mr Storonsky has been publicly critical of the delay and last year questioned the approach of British regulators and politicians when he suggested he would not consider a listing on the London Stock Exchange.
An IPO for Revolut still seems a long way off, although it wouldn’t surprise investors or industry peers if it were to start a listing process in the coming years.
One person close to Revolut said board members were among those expected to participate in the secondary share sale, although further details were unclear this weekend.
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The company is chaired by Martin Gilbert, the City veteran who faced governance and performance challenges at Assetco, the London-listed asset manager he heads.
The other directors include Michael Sherwood, the former Goldman Sachs executive who helped run its operations outside the US and was considered one of the most skilled traders of his generation.
An outside shareholder of the company said the exclusion of non-employees from the deal could draw criticism from some investors.
Revolut has conducted these types of secondary equity sales in the past, including after its 2021 Series E round.
This weekend, Revolut declined to comment.