Visma approaches City grandee to act as chair if €20bn London listing goes ahead
Visma, one of Europe’s biggest software companies, has approached a leading City grandee to become its chair if it goes ahead with a blockbuster €20bn (£17.6bn) listing in London next spring.Sir Ron Kalifa, a former boss of payments group Worldpay and a director of the Bank of England, is considered the leading candidate for the potential role after a round of interviews in recent weeks, the Guardian understands.However, sources close to the process cautioned that London was not yet certain to land the sought-after listing of the Norwegian company, which has been backed by the UK-based private equity company Hg Capital for almost two decades.Stockholm has emerged as a rival because Visma is better known in Scandinavian markets, and because the Swedish bourse last month hosted the successful €13.
7bn flotation, or initial public offering (IPO), of the security services group Verisure, whose shares rose 25% on debut.The absence of similar-sized IPOs in recent years is seen as one risk to listing in London.An offer to Kalifa to join Visma’s board may depend on London being chosen.Its executive chair, Øystein Moan, who was Visma’s chief executive from 1997 to 2020, could yet stay in that role.The Oslo-based company is running “early look” meetings with large fund managers to gauge likely demand for the shares and investors’ preference on listing venue and governance.
The company is being advised by the investment banks Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and UBS,London was reported in the summer to have beaten Amsterdam to attract the listing in what was seen as a coup – Visma would be the biggest London listing for years,An eleventh-hour loss to Stockholm would be regarded as a heavy blow,“There are different routes this could go down and nothing is yet decided,” said one source close to the process,The potential recruitment of Kalifa may become important to London’s case.
Kalifa was chief executive of Worldpay for more than 10 years and later vice-chair.He led the group through a period of rapid growth during which it was bought out of the Royal Bank of Scotland after the financial crash and later re-emerged as a stand-alone FTSE 100 company.Worldpay was bought by US rival Vantiv for £9.3bn in 2017.A London listing would also represent a personal win for Kalifa.
He wrote a high-profile report for the government in 2021 on how to boost the UK’s financial technology (fintech) sector by attracting investment and new companies – including how to encourage them to choose London.Sign up to Business TodayGet set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morningafter newsletter promotionWhile Visma is not a pure tech company, it sees the development of AI products to “simplify and automate complex processes” as critical to its business in the next few years.The group makes accounting, payroll and HR software products for 2.2 million customers.It has 17,500 employees and describes itself as the leading provider outside North America of “mission-critical business software”.
Woman killed herself after south London hospital neglect, coroner concludes
A woman killed herself after a south London psychiatric unit failed to search her possessions adequately, a coroner has concluded.Michelle Sparman, a personal trainer and call dispatcher for the Metropolitan police from Battersea, south-west London, died on 28 August 2021 at Kingston hospital, four days after trying to take her own life.The assistant coroner, Bernard Richmond KC, concluded that Sparman, 48, died of a hypoxic brain injury, determining she had died by “suicide whilst the balance of her mind was disturbed, contributed to by neglect”.He determined four probable causes of death: her struggles with anxiety and depression, including impulsiveness; a “difficult relationship” with her ex-partner, including “intemperate and excessive texting” from him, which called into question her mental health and fitness to be a mother; her “justifiable feelings of abuse” as a result of his behaviour, and inadequate searching on leaving and entering Rose Ward, a locked 20-bed female-only mental health unit at Queen Mary’s hospital in Roehampton.He cited her perimenopausal symptoms and financial and professional problems as possible causes
‘It’s cruel’: relatives of residents react to proposal to close Lancashire care homes
Elderly residents of care home left anxious after Reform-led county council started consultation over plans for its closureFor Marjorie Aspden, 95, Woodlands care home in Clayton-le-Moors in Accrington was the perfect place to spend her twilight years. When she looked out from the window of her room, she saw the woods that she played in as a young girl and felt a sense of contentment.Now she and hundreds of other elderly residents are facing uncertainty after the Reform-led Lancashire county council announced it would consult on plans to close care homes in the area.Last month it began a consultation on moving residents out of five local authority care homes and day centres into other premises. The consultation closes in mid-December and the cabinet will make a final decision on the closures in February
Why is social mobility such an obsession? | Letters
In recent discussions about changes in both the curriculum and forms of examination in English secondary education, one ambition has often been named: that of increasing social mobility.Quite why this aim remains unexamined is unfortunate. Nobody would wish any child to be refused access and support for any number of occupations. But we surely have to ask, as successive governments have not, why a focus on this aspiration obscures the much more socially radical and equitable aim of making all occupations viable, rewarded and respected.Surely there is already sufficient cut-throat competition within the English class system without enshrining ideas which focus on diminishing the value of jobs and occupations to be “escaped” from
‘Better and cheaper’: the case for prostate cancer screening among black men
Junior Hemans was having a routine health check in 2014 when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, at the age of 51. He knew there was an increased risk of the disease in black men so asked to have a prostate specific antigen (PSA) test, which was not initially included.“And when I went, they said I had a raised PSA level for my age,” Hemans said. “[The diagnosis] was a shock … because I had no symptoms.”The PSA test, which is used to check for conditions including prostate cancer or an enlarged prostate, is not routinely offered on the NHS at present
Stephen Dawson obituary
My friend Stephen Dawson, who has died of cancer aged 78, had the questionable luck of being a newly minted urologist when Aids first struck in London in the early 1980s.The son of Philip, a nuclear physicist at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, and May, a housewife, Steve was born in London, went to King Alfred’s school, Wantage, and studied medicine at University College Hospital before qualifying as a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in the late 70s. The decade that followed was both clinically fascinating and emotionally challenging.Working in genitourinary clinics around London, Steve helped chart the rise of HIV-opportunistic diseases while being able to do little to treat them. It was typical of him that, in 1988, he left Aids medicine in London for the professionally less glamorous Slough, to work as the first consultant in genitourinary medicine in east Berkshire
Two-thirds of nurses in UK work while unwell, says union
Nurses across the UK are working while unwell in understaffed hospitals, with stress as the leading cause of illness, according to research.A survey by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) of more than 20,000 nursing staff found that 66% had worked when they should have been on sick leave, up from 49% in 2017.Just under two-thirds (65%) of respondents cited stress to be the biggest cause of illness, up from 50% in 2017. Seven out of 10 said they had worked in excess of their contracted hours at least once a week, with about half (52%) doing so unpaid.The NHS has more than 25,000 nursing vacancies across England
Starmer pleads for government to unite in fightback after difficult week
‘Deeply shocking’: Nigel Farage faces fresh claims of racism and antisemitism at school
Most Reform UK voters would back wealth tax on very rich, poll suggests
Reform would ‘cut benefits for EU nationals and hike NHS immigration surcharge’
Reform MP invites Mahmood to join his party, saying he ‘welcomes’ and ‘recognises’ her rhetoric – as it happened
Shabana Mahmood puts the signs up: Britain is full. No blacks, no dogs, no Irish