Fintech
Revolut’s proposed $40 billion IPO must be painful for departing partners
Revolut, the UK’s app-based bank, is planning to make people rich. Not necessarily customers, but employees. THE Financial Times says it is preparing a flotation that would value it at $40 billion following the sale of $500 million of existing shares, including shares held by staff.
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Like we did noticed, Revolut pays 33% to 50% of its compensation in shares, so many of its 10,000 employees will benefit from selling shares. However, some of those who would surely have benefited from the sale of employee shares have walked away, presumably leaving their shares on the table.
The exits include Revolut’s 31-year-old former CFO, Mikko Salovaara, who left last May for “personal reasons” just two years after joining and shortly after Revolut’s auditor, BDO, reportedly questioned his 2021 accounts. Salovaara resurfaced shortly thereafter as Bolt’s CFO. He was replaced at Revolut by Victor Stinga, who graduated from Cass Business School in 2015.
Working with group finance and strategy head Ashley Moorman, who joined from KPMG in 2019, Stinga is now supposedly responsible for completing the accounts that will help it reach the proposed $40 billion valuation. The FT says the valuation is based on expected 2023 revenues of £1.7 billion ($2.15 billion) and a “double-digit” profit margin. If the margin is 20%, this implies a profit of $429 million and a multiple above 90. Revolut 2022 accountsfiled in January 2024 show revenues of £611 million and net profit of £15 million ($19 million).
Other senior departures from Revolut from 2023 include Aaron Elliott-Gross, Revolut’s head of product and operations for financial crime, who left for Wise in 2024, Matthew Maher, the former people director, Yuval Rechter, the former US general manager, James Radford, the former UK CEO and Michal Laube, the group COO. Radford is now CEO of Lycamoney.
If the $40 billion valuation comes to fruition, Salovaara and others may regret their premature exit. Remaining staff who have survived Revolut’s “A team” culture will presumably feel vindicated. People leave Revolut because they can’t cope with the pace, one former senior employee said: “For anyone even remotely ambitious, it’s a great place to work,” he told us last year.
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