The Sanne Group, a fund administrator for alternative asset classes such as real estate and private equity, has raised £141.6m through a London initial public offering that values the company at £232m.
The Jersey-based company, which administers about €50bn of assets, said it planned to accelerate its growth and was looking for potential acquisitions in Europe and Asia amid expected consolidation of the sector.
Assets in so-called alternatives are expected to double from their current $6.9tn globally over the next five years, said Dean Godwin, chief executive, while tighter regulation is driving demand for qualified administrators.
"We feel there is a real move by fund managers from the insourced to the outsourced model, while regulation is driving growth," he said.
Sanne conducts corporate and fund administration, reporting and custody services for debt, real estate and private equity, and handles private clients and employee share trusts. It is also planning to expand into new asset classes.
Its shares, priced at 200p, are expected to begin trading on April 1 on the London Stock Exchange.
The owners, including Inflexion Private Equity and the executive directors, are set to make £113.6m, while the company said it would use the remaining £28m to partially repay debt for general working capital.
Following the IPO, Inflexion will hold 11.1 per cent of the shares and the directors and senior management will hold 23.6 per cent.
Founded in 1988, Sanne has 300 staff and offices in five European financial centres plus Dubai, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore.
Pension funds and insurers are increasing their allocations to so-called alternatives such as private equity as they chase returns in an environment of low yields and low interest rates, according to surveys.
Mr Godwin said Sanne operated in a "highly fragmented industry with lots of small, single-product, single-jurisdictional players across the globe and no real dominant player".
"Scaling the business on a global scale is part of our strategy," he said.
Sanne hopes its listing will help it to attract more highly qualified staff to carry out the "bespoke, high-touch service required in alternative asset classes", Mr Godwin added.
The company bought two portfolios of contracts from State Street, the US-based custodian bank, in 2013 and 2014.
© The Financial Times Limited 2015. All rights reserved.
FT and Financial Times are trademarks of the Financial Times Ltd.
Not to be redistributed, copied or modified in any way.
Euro2day.gr is solely responsible for providing this translation and the Financial Times Limited does not accept any liability for the accuracy or quality of the translation