Panmure Gordon and Liberum join forces to create the UK’s largest independent broker

London brokers Panmure Gordon and Liberum are merging to create the largest advisor to London-listed companies, the two said in a joint statement yesterday. The all-stock transaction will also see Panmure Liberum become the largest advisor to UK-quoted investment funds. The transaction makes Panmure Liberum the top player by volume in the under GBP 1 bn IPO market over the past five years.

The transaction comes as brokers struggle with dealflow as the IPO market in London remains stagnant, the Financial Times notes. Panmure boss Rich Ricci (pictured above) will lead the merged entity while Liberum founder Shane Le Prevost will be non-executive chairman.

THE LOCAL ANGLE: EFG Holding took a 10% stake in Panmure Gordon back in 2008, exiting it in a 2017 sale to Atlas Merchant Capital (owned by former Barclays chief Bob Diamond) and QInvest. Atlas Merchant remains a shareholder after the merger with Liberum and will provide the new outfit with “substantial financial backing and the liquidity to support its long-term strategic ambitions.”

ALSO WORTH NOTING-

#1- Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are reporting their lowest profits in four yearsafter a slow 2023 for investment bankers weighed on earnings. Blame depressed M&A dealflow and anemic IPO execution.

But, but, but… Top execs at both banks said on earnings calls that they’re seeing signs that corporate appetite to raise capital, do M&As, and go public is on the rise, with both Morgan CFO Sharon Yeshaya and Goldman CEO David Solomon pointing to growing pipelines of transactions. “I’m pretty optimistic,” Solomon said on his results call. “I’m not going to say it’s running back to 10-year averages right away, but it has materially improved.”

#2- Elon Musk wants more shares of Tesla to stick around and help the carmaker tackle AI. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he would be willing to grow the EV maker into an AI and robotics leader only if he has at least 25% voting control — roughly double his current c.13% stake. He added in a later post that having a voting power of 15% or lower “makes a takeover by dubious interests too easy.” (Reuters)

It would be a shame if something were to happen to your nice company, fellas… Don’t give him the shares? Elon will look to build new things outside Tesla, he warned. “Unless that is the case, I would prefer to build products outside of Tesla,” he wrote on X. Musk is basically asking Tesla to give him the bns of USD he spent on his ill-fated acquisition of Twitter — and then some.

THE CLOSING BELL-

The TASI fell -0.4% yesterday on turnover of SAR 9 bn. The index is up +0.9% YTD.

In the green: GIG (+9.9%), MBC Group (+9.8%) and Saudi German Health (+8%).

In the red: Ataa (-4.4%), Savola Group (-3.4%) and Saudi Kayan (-3.3%).

Asian markets are mixed in early trading this morning ahead of the release today of Chinese economic data and after all three major Us indexes closed Tuesday in the red. Futures point to a weak opening in Europe and on Wall Street later this morning.