14 January 2021

FT: Amsterdam vies for IPO spotlight as Brexit dents London’s allure

The decision by Polish ecommerce group InPost to pick Amsterdam for its stock listing offers the latest sign that London risks losing its grip as a trading hub after Brexit. UK chancellor Rishi Sunak has referred to the hard break from the EU in financial services that kicked in on January 1 as “Big Bang 2.0", a trigger for the City of London to flourish.

But bankers say Amsterdam is already showing potential to eat in to London's pre-eminence as a European capital markets centre. Trading in EU shares fled London for EU centres including the Dutch city on the first day outside the single market at the start of 2021.

Wednesday's announcement by the Advent-backed parcel locker business suggests that initial public offerings may also gravitate towards where trading in European stocks is more lively. “Looking at the options and the stock markets, Amsterdam looks very attractive because it seems that now that Euronext Amsterdam is becoming a kind of preferred tech companies listing stock exchange,” said Rafał Brzoska, InPost chief executive. “Where in the past London was the default, we could see Amsterdam emerging as a new neutral listing place for IPOs, certainly for central and eastern European countries,” added Andreas Bernstorff, head of European equity capital markets at BNP Paribas, which advised on the InPost deal.

“That is something that’s been accelerated by Brexit but also regulatory advantages in Amsterdam compared to London. We see that theme continuing.” Euronext Amsterdam — part of a group of exchanges across the continent — handled just two IPOs last year, far behind London's tally of 36, including dual listings, Dealogic data show. But one of the Dutch deals, for coffee conglomerate JDE Peet’s, was the biggest European listing last year and at €2.3bn, the largest since 2018.

The lockdown-era deal in May was the first €1bn-plus listing executed virtually, with the roadshow taking just three days, down from a typical 14. Around 90 per cent of investment in the deal came from outside the Netherlands. I'm not so much concerned about where the centre of the [European] capital markets union will be. I don't care. I'm mostly concerned that the whole of Euronext can facilitate that René van Vlerken, Euronext Amsterdam That flexibility and international reach for a large deal has provided evidence that the Dutch financial centre can absorb transactions that might otherwise have headed for London...

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