Shawbrook owners reportedly mulling listing

The private equity owners of Shawbrook are reportedly seeking to revive plans for a flotation of the specialist savings and lending bank.

Shawbrook was bought by BC Partners and Pollen Street Capital for £868m. The duo previously explored either selling the bank to a suitor or listing it in 2022, when they sought a valuation of about £2bn, but abandoned their plans later that year in the face of volatile markets.

The Times newspaper reported, citing unnamed sources, that the plan to explore a listing was at an early stage.

Shawbrook has been listed briefly on the stock market before. The bank can trace its roots to Whiteaway Laidlaw, a bank based in Manchester that was bought by the private equity arm of Royal Bank of Scotland Group in 2011 and subsequently renamed Shawbrook.

RBS, now called NatWest, later spun off its private equity business to create Pollen Street, which in turn listed Shawbrook on the stock exchange in 2015 in a float that put a £725m. Pollen Street then teamed up with BC to take the bank private two years later.

Shawbrook has since grown rapidly. It generated record annual pre-tax profits of £233m, up from £86.5m in the year it was delisted. By September last year, its loan book had reached £12.6bn and it had attracted £13.4bn in deposits.

Reporting by Frank Prenesti for Sharecast.com