Fintech
Goldman Sachs’ Fintech IPO Is Making M.D.s and… Mushroom Farmers Millionaires
Financial Technology IPOs are re-emerging and UK Fintech employees are among the beneficiaries. The latest example is payments fintech Ebury, which will go public next year with the help of Goldman Sachs. Its expected valuation of £2 billion ($2.59 billion) could be significantly lower than Revolut’s most recent valuation is $40 billionbut it’s still make millionaires of quite a few employees.
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According to Ebury’s most recent confirmation statement from December 2023, the fintech had 3,619,767 shares. With a market capitalization of £2 billion, each share would be worth £552.52. The individual shareholder with the largest number of shares is, of course, Ebury’s founder.
According to the December release, Ebury CEO Juan Lobato owned 62,344 shares that would earn him a cool £34.45m. Before founding Ebury, Lobato spent two and a half years at McKinsey, before becoming CEO of digital media distribution platform Beam.TV. Other Ebury executives who could earn millions include Enrique-Diaz Alvarez, a former MD of SocGen prop trading who is currently Ebury’s chief risk officer. He had 5,270 shares in the filing, which would be worth £2.91m.
Two people set to be £20m richer from the IPO are board member Fabio Salvalaggio and his wife Annabella. They are both majority shareholders, with stakes of £11.74m and £10.72m respectively. Salvalaggio was a former director of harbourmaster capital management, a European leveraged loan manager bought by Blackstone’s GSO Capital Partners in 2013.
One of Ebury’s longest-serving beneficiaries is Jane Sim, a former sales director and chief people officer. She spent 11 years at the fintech, has £11.17m in shares and retired to Spain three years ago.
In addition to Ebury employees, one of the richest individuals in the IPO will be Bank of Ireland vice-chairman Richard Goulding, who owns £6.34 million in shares. Goulding is also a non-executive director at Wowa UK digital bank too toying with the prospect of an IPOso this may not be the last of its fintech IPO joys.
One of Ebury’s more unusual investors is Caerwyn Prothero, a mushroom grower for Cambridge Mushrooms. Prothero previously spent six years at RBS and was head of innovation at payments fintech CashFlows; he is currently a director at private equity firm Midsummer Capital, in addition to his gourmet mushroom business.
A former Ebury student set to earn more than a million had previously been engaged in a legal battle with the company; Golda Ajayi reported in a 2020 court that the company had given her the wrong amount of shares. Although both Ebury’s claim and counterclaim for breach of confidentiality failed, the case revealed that Ebury’s share price in 2013 was £17.80, meaning employees who had signed up at that time would have received a markup of… 3,100% on their share investments. Ajayi was said to have owned over 3,000 shares at one point, but the confirmation statement revealed he had 2,135 shares more recently, worth £1.18 million
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