White & Case’s City growth strategy is seeing results with the US firm and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer winning places advising Alfa Financial Software on its planned float on the London Stock Exchange. The initial public offering (IPO) is expected to value Alfa at more than £800m.
The float of the company, which specialises in software for the asset finance industry, will be the largest UK tech listing in the past two years. Alfa’s clients include Bank of America, Barclays and Mercedes-Benz.
Alfa enlisted White & Case with advice from Jonathan Parry, who joined last summer from Ashurst, alongside partners Inigo Esteve and Laura Sizemore. Freshfields is advising the underwriters Barclays and Numis Securities, with a team including partners Mark Austin and Doug Smith.
Parry told Legal Business: ‘Given the backdrop of Brexit, we’re much busier than expected, which is great. There are a number of avenues we thought about when contemplating my move to White & Case as to where activity might come from. There were my own links with financial advisers, the potential of high-yield to IPO mandates, linking up with the private equity practice on exits from the IPO route and all of the London inbound work from our network. At the time, we were optimistic that at some point they would, but at the moment all four generate work, which I wasn’t expecting.’
It has been a subdued 12 months for listings in the London market, although in November last year it emerged Freshfields and Linklaters were advising on medical products company ConvaTec’s $1.8bn IPO. The global medical products company raised around £1.5bn, the largest European healthcare IPO for more than 20 years.
madeleine.farman@legalease.co.uk