At present, FSF has no authority from
shareholders to issue stock and has drawn
down £420.3m under its bank facilities.
Gearing as a percentage of gross asset value
was 41% as at June 30.
FSF raised £48.1m from a placing of 45m
shares at 107p in June.
FSF has exclusivity on a target portfolio of
10 operational solar assets in the UK from
Foresight Group with a total installed
capacity of 72MW for £30.1m. The portfolio
has debt facilities totalling £62.1m, mostly
provided by Royal Bank of Scotland,
expiring by September 30 2019, with
Foresight intending to refinance the
portfolio before the end of June 2019.
Shareholder approval will be sought for
the issuance of up to 53.99m shares,
representing 10.9% of existing share capital.
At the same pricing for the June placing, this
fundraising would total approximately £58m.
Details of an EGM are expected to follow
soon. Stifel is sole bookrunner.PLAYTECH UNLOADS ENTIRE PLUS500
STAKE AFTER FOUNDERS SELLPLUS500’s five founders opted for an intraday
accelerated bookbuild led by Liberum to sell a
combined 8% of the UK financial services
company on Thursday. Investors that
missed out on that trade, or were not
tempted by the price, were offered another
chance to buy as Credit Suisse followed up
with a 10% sale on behalf of the company’s
largest shareholder hours later.
The sell-downs come after a warning from
the company that its stellar H1 financial
results were unlikely to be repeated, and two
weeks before it is set to join the FTSE 250.
At around 2pm on Thursday, Plus500
announced an intraday sale with its five
founders offering 9.39m shares for a price of
£15.50 apiece. They sold 8% of the
company’s share capital, half of their
combined stakes.
Pricing came at a 2.27% discount to the
previous night’s close of £15.86, and a 4.1%
discount to the share price around the time
of the placing, which had climbed to £16.17
by 1pm.
The founders, who took home a haul of
£145.55m between them, are locked up for
90 days. Though the lock-up did not have
quite the desired effect as there was another
seller waiting in the wings.
Hot on the heels of the founders was
major shareholder Playtech, which
unloaded its entire 10% stake in Plus500 and
bagged £175.6m.
Credit Suisse was forced to delay the launch
of the ABB until 7pm as a result of the
unexpected earlier placing, as well as put
the range at £15.35–£15.50, despite having
bought the shares at £15.50 from Playtech.A total of 11.4m shares were offered to
the market, about 11 days’ trading.
Investors apparently still had appetite
despite their earlier fill, and books were
covered and oversubscribed within an hour.
Pricing eventually came at £15.40, meaning
a £1.1m loss on the trade, although that does
not take into account the bank’s fees.
“Ours priced 10p lower than where the
other guys sold,” a banker on the Playtech
deal said, “Our deal was bigger and
happened on the same day so we thought it
was important the market got a better price,
given the earlier supply and larger size.”
A mixture of long-only and hedge-fund
investors were noted among the 30 lines in
the book, and there was no wall-crossing
involved, the banker said.
Investors who caught the later trade
enjoyed a slightly sweeter discount of 4.2%
to Thursday’s close.
Whichever trade investors bought in, the
heavy supply from key shareholders meant
they were soon sitting on a loss. Shares
closed at £14.90 on Friday.FARFETCH GETS DRESSED FOR SUCCESSFARFETCH, a London-based luxury fashion
online marketplace whose platform sales
are likely to top US$1bn this year, has
launched a US$637.6m NYSE IPO.Farfetch plans to sell 30.1m primary
shares and insiders 7.4m shares at US$15–
$17 each. JD.com is buying stock in a
concurrent private placement to reduce
dilution of its 13.94% stake.
Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Allen & Company,
UBS, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and Wells
Fargo are joint bookrunners.
The roadshow was in London on Thursday
and Friday before turning to New York and
the rest of the US in the coming week and
ahead of pricing on September 20.
Like a number of other US IPOs scheduled
for this month, Farfetch is taking a longer-
than-normal marketing period to account
for calendar disruptions (including Jewish
holidays) during September.
At the top end of the range, the terms give
Farfetch a market capitalisation of
US$4.85bn versus revenue of about
US$267.5m in the first half of this year.
Farfetch collects as revenue about 30% of
the sales by nearly 1,000 luxury sellers on its
platform. Platform sales are on track to
easily surpass US$1bn this year.
Investors are expected to line Farfetch up
against a wide range of companies including
e-commerce players like Square and
Shopify, marketplaces such as Delivery Hero
and Grubhub, luxury brands such as Canada
Goose and Richemont, and fashion
e-commerce names such as Zalando, Stitch90 International Financing Review September 8 2018JD.com investors spooked
by ‘key man risk’
n UK Police investigating allegation of rape against founder and CEO Richard Liu
A US police investigation into an allegation
of rape against JD.COM CEO Richard Liu has
hammered the e-commerce giant’s shares,
with the case laying bare the risks posed by his
iron grip on management and the lack of other
leaders to challenge him.
Liu was arrested on August 31 and then
released without charge in the US city of
Minneapolis on September 1. Through his
lawyers, he has denied any wrongdoing.
While the tech industry is known for the
outsized control that founders such as Liu have
over their businesses, China’s tech leaders tend
to be all-powerful, exacerbating governance
risks.
Liu’s control of JD.com in particular has
raised eyebrows, given company rules that
make it virtually impossible for the board to
make decisions without him present.
“There is so much more hierarchy and less
willingness to challenge the boss and less
collective leadership around Chinese iconic
leaders,” said James Robinson, managingdirector in Shanghai for public relations firm
APCO Worldwide.
Robinson added that this had compounded
the sense of crisis and confusion when the
news first broke. JD.com’s communications
team had stated that police had “quickly
determined” there was no substance to
the claim against Liu even though the
investigation was still ongoing, and took
almost two days to acknowledge he had been
held by police overnight.
“If your top person is in a jail in Minnesota,
then it could be a question of a lack of
decision-making authority,” he said.
Liu was arrested late on August 31 in
Minneapolis and held by police for a little over
16 hours before being released. No bail was set.
Police are still investigating. His lawyers have
said they do not expect charges to be laid.
According to Minnesota law, the maximum
penalty if found guilty of first degree sexual
assault is 30 years and the minimum is 12
years.10 Equities and SE 2250 p81-98.indd 90 07/09/2018 20:19:32