The London Stock Exchange’s biggest listing in five years has fallen flat on its first day of trading.
Shares in Airtel Money, an African payments business, fell by 6pc on their debut on Friday amid lacklustre demand for the £5.3bn listing.
Airtel Money is a subsidiary of FTSE 100 mobile operator Airtel Africa, which is ultimately controlled by Indian billionaire Sunil Bharti Mittal’s Bharti Enterprises.
Mr Mittal’s decision to list the company in London had been viewed as a welcome boost for the London Stock Exchange, which is suffering from a dearth of new listings.
However, Airtel Money’s shares declined as trading opened and closed at 184p on Friday, below the offer price of 196p.
The company raised about £582m in the listing at a valuation of around £5.3bn when trading began.
The valuation would be enough to secure the company a place in the FTSE 100, though it is below the £6.8bn valuation the company had reportedly been targeting earlier this year.
Roger Lee, head of equity strategy at investment bank Cavendish, said: “Investors are very discerning given modest valuations of existing listed UK small and mid-cap companies.”
Mr Mittal, who has a net worth of around £18bn, hailed the listing as a “vote of confidence in the UK” on Friday.
The deal adds to the billionaire’s sprawling business empire.
Mr Mittal’s Bharti Enterprises is the largest shareholder in BT, which has embarked on a major cost-cutting drive since the billionaire started building his stake, as well as the owner of Scottish golf resort Gleneagles.
He also helped to orchestrate a bailout of OneWeb, a British satellite business, along with Boris Johnson’s government during the pandemic.
Mr Mittal said the listing “builds on Bharti’s significant record of long-term interests in the UK”.
The number of new listings in London has fallen sharply from nearly 60 in 2007 to barely a handful in each of the last four years.
Mr Mittal listed Airtel Africa in the capital in 2019, before the market was upended by the pandemic, wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and uncertainty over Labour tax rises.
He added: “In 2019, we listed Airtel Africa in London to leverage the UK’s established investor base of patient, strategic capital, and willingness to invest in dynamic emerging market companies.
“The same conditions made London the obvious choice for this new listing in 2026.”
Airtel Money was launched in 2011, offering a mobile wallet and smartphone payments. It has around 53 million users, operating payment kiosks across Africa, and generated annual revenues last year of about £1.1bn.