Wise money transfer group now worth £8 billion after launch

IT was a big day for their founders as Wise money transfer group now worth £8 billion after launch in London.

The British Financial Institutions are looking for ways of attracting money back to London and on Wednesday July 7, the London Stock Exchange (LSE) saw a historic first.

Following a practice which is not unknown in the USA, a Fintech company simply called Wise became the first ever direct listing of a tech company on the LSE.

The founders of the company, two Estonians took the company public using a direct listing, which does not involve raising new capital or bringing in new investors like in a formal IPO launch.

Many investors remember the recent relative failure of the traditional IPO launch of Deliveroo which due to its structure did not attract investment by large institutions.

This was effectively a three-hour long auction which saw prices start at £1 and shoot up to £10 for shares priced at £8 and this raised a staggering £8 billion (€8.8 billion).

According to Kristo Kaarmann and Taavet Hinrikus who founded the company in 2010 when they were both working in London, Taavet was being paid in euros and Kristo in sterling but both hated the thought of paying exchange commission to banks so created their own exchange and transfer company with low customer charges.

Now they have grown but still argue that banks cream of around €150 billion a year from hidden charges in exchange rates and when transferring money abroad.

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