Visma Eyes London IPO

IPO Plans

As the UK market grapples with firms preferring to list on Nasdaq, or being taken private, Norwegian firm Visma, which provides accounting and payroll software to SMEs is looking to go public on the London market.  

Ownership

Visma is 70% owned by Hg and co-investors, which include GIC and TPG.

A Multi Billion EUR Company with M&A as a Core Growth Driver

Visma has grown with 350 bolt-on acquisitions with 2.8 billion EUR revenues last year. 

Example acquisition and its Merits (New regions and jurisdictions)

One of their more recent acquisitions was Evoliz in February 2025, which provides cloud based financial management for SMEs in France (alternativement PMEs - or petite et moyenne entreprises) and whose CEO is François Aupetit.  At time of acquisition, Evoliz had almost 13,000 customers. It's functionality includes invoicing, quote management and VAT, basically all the workflow that will ultimately flow into your financial accounts.  It is also NF203 certified (French standard for management software) anticipating new regulations on electronic invoicing from 2026.

Bulgaria Likely to Get Approval to Adopt Euro in 2026

The European Commission is likely to give Bulgaria approval to adopt the Euro in 2026 which would make Bulgaria the 21st country to adopt the currency. 

347 million Europeans in 20 countries use the Euro. If Bulgaria joins that adds another 6.7/6.8 million people to the default "user base". Then the Euro will support just over 350 million people.

There are conditions for euro-candidate countries in terms of consumer inflation (relative to the three best EU performers, in April France was the lowest inflation country at 0.9%), constraints over budget deficit as % of GDP, as well as a maximum of 60% debt relative to GDP. 

Stability of the exchange rate is also a factor. 

The technical criteria is staying within a 15% either side of a central parity rate in the Exchange Rate Mechanism II (ERM II).

Macron Elected as French Pres - Mayor of Le Havre new PM

Emmanuel Macron, the new President of France, has picked Edouard Philippe as the country's new PM as of 15 May 2017. He studied at the ENA, a school designed to democratise access to the country's senior civil service.