Visma, one of Europe’s biggest software companies, has approached a leading City grandee to become its chair if it goes ahead with a blockbuster €20bn listing in London next spring.
Sir Ron Kalifa, former boss of payments group Worldpay and a director of the Bank of England, is considered the leading candidate for the potential role after a round of interviews in recent weeks, the Guardian understands.
However, sources close to the process cautioned that London is not yet certain to land the sought-after listing of the Norwegian company, which has been backed by UK-based private equity firm Hg Capital for almost two decades.
Stockholm has emerged as a rival because Visma is better known in Scandinavian markets, and because the Swedish bourse last month hosted the successful €13.7bn flotation, or initial public offering (IPO), of security services group Verisure, whose shares rose 25% on debut.
The absence of similar-sized IPOs in recent years is seen as one risk to listing in London. An offer to Kalifa to join Visma’s board may depend on London being chosen. Current executive chair, Øystein Moan, who was Visma’s chief executive from 1997 to 2020, could yet stay in that role.
The Oslo-based company is currently running “early look” meetings with major fund managers to gauge likely demand for the shares and investors’ preference for listing venue and governance. The company is being advised by investment banks Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and UBS.
London was reported in the summer to have beaten Amsterdam to attract the listing in what was seen as a coup – Visma would be the biggest London listing for years. An eleventh-hour loss to Stockholm would be regarded as a heavy blow. “There are different routes this could go down and nothing is yet decided,” said one source close to the process.
The potential recruitment of Kalifa may become important to London’s case. Kalifa was chief executive of Worldpay for more than 10 years and later vice chair. He led the group through a period of rapid growth during which it was bought out of Royal Bank of Scotland after the financial crash and later re-emerged as a standalone FTSE 100 company. Worldpay was bought by US rival Vantiv for £9.3bn in 2017.
A London listing would also represent a personal win for Kalifa. He wrote a high-profile report for government in 2021 into how to boost the UK’s financial technology sector by attracting investment and new companies – including how to encourage them to choose London.
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While Visma is not a pure technology company, it sees the development of AI products to “simplify and automate complex processes” as critical to its business in the next few years.
The group makes accounting, payroll and HR software products for 2.2 million customers. It has 17,500 employees and describes itself as the leading provider outside North America of “mission-critical business software”.