Mishcon de Reya spent £12m on shelved London IPO

By Louis Goss

Mishcon de Reya spent almost £12m in readying itself to list on the London Stock Exchange, before shelving its initial public offering (IPO) in June.

In a Companies House filing, the law firm said it spend more than £11.7m on preparing for its IPO before calling the public float off for the “foreseeable future due to market conditions”.

“During the course of the year, the Group incurred expenses of £11,715,000… relating to the preparation for a potential listing on the London Stock Exchange,” Mishcon’s Companies House filing says.

The more than £11.7m sum includes more than £2.6m paid out to auditors and almost £5.9m paid out in loan provisions, the law firm said.

The float would have seen Mishcon become the sixth ever UK law firm to list on public markets, after the firm first raised the prospect of an IPO in 2019.

The law firm’s partners later voted in favour of plans for a float in September 2021, before Mishcon delayed its IPO in January 2022 due to “volatile” market conditions.

At the time, Mishcon said its senior management had sought to put the IPO plans on hold, following conversations with investors.

The January delay came just a week after WeTransfer also cancelled its IPO, after Deliveroo’s London listing was branded the worse public float in the London Stock Exchange’s history.

The January decision also came just days after the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) fined Mishcon a record £232,500 over anti-money laundering failures.

City A.M. approached Mishcon de Reya for comment.

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