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Tracking where the new money is moving can be telling. And regarding fintech companies, there remain signs that London’s stock market is still struggling to attract investors. British payments company Wise, for example, said it’s moving its main stock listing to the U.S., in the latest blow to European markets.
Mark Maurer takes a look at why and provides the latest updates from Wise; he writes in today’s newsletter:
Wise is close to moving its main stock listing to the U.S. from the U.K., sometime in the second quarter, as the payments company further expands its operations in the country. At a time when finance leaders weigh new strategies for growth, the company intrigued me as an example of a business pursuing a dual listing.
The company, which in 2021 went public in London through a direct listing, is aiming to tap into the greater liquidity of the U.S. capital market and build out its presence in Austin and elsewhere.
“The liquidity we see in the stocks in London is not attractive enough for certain investments from an investor point of view,” Chief Financial Officer Emmanuel Thomassin told me in an interview.
Wise last year applied for a U.S. bank charter, which Thomassin said would allow it to reduce costs and increase the speed of payments for its customers. “We want to do this because of the comfort, convenience and speed of transactions, but also because we’re scaling,” Thomassin said.
The company will continue to list in London, meaning it will now report its financials in both U.S. generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP, and international financial-reporting standards, or IFRS. “You have to prepare two perspectives that you send to two different regulators, and in both cases, the team is under pressure,” Thomassin said.
That focus makes the manager’s role particularly important, he said. “The listing is an event, but the work continues after, so you have to make sure that the team remains stable,” Thomassin said.
Despite aiming to grow in the U.S., Wise doesn’t plan to take advantage of the Trump administration’s cryptocurrency-friendly stance.
“We don't support crypto technology in our application today," said Thomassin. “But we're looking at stablecoins because sometimes people ask us, 'What about stablecoins?' Stablecoins is, for us, another rail to transfer money. The way we look at stablecoin is that stablecoin is supposed to solve the speed and the cost, but today Wise is already solving both. We could onboard this, but we think that there are other services that we are developing that are more needed than this one right now.”
—Mark Maurer
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