Tradeweb raises US$1.1b in the year's No 2 IPO in US

New York

TRADEWEB Markets Inc raised US$1.1 billion in the second-largest US initial public offering this year, after again increasing the number of shares it was selling and then pricing them above the marketed range.

The bond and derivative trading platform sold 40 million shares for US$27 apiece on Wednesday, according to a statement. Tradeweb had originally planned to sell 27.3 million shares for US$24 to US$26 each and had boosted the size of the offering on Tuesday to 36.25 million shares to buy back more of the stock held by its bank investors.

The IPO values the New York-based company at about US$6 billion based on its filings.

Tradeweb intends to use proceeds to buy shares held by eight of the 11 large banks that own stakes in the company, including Bank of America Corp, Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Morgan Stanley and UBS Group AG, according to its registration statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Despite a slow start, 2019 is shaping up to be a blockbuster year for US IPOs. Lyft Inc's US$2.34 billion IPO in March has been the biggest listing this year. Levi Strauss & Co's US$623 million offering in February ranked third. Tradeweb's IPO is also the biggest for a financial services company in the US since online lender GreenSky Inc raised US$874 million in May.

The offering follows benefits administrator Alight Inc's decision in March to postpone plans to raise up to US$800 million in an IPO. Alight and Tradeweb are both owned by private equity firm Blackstone Group LP, which led the US$17 billion acquisition last year of Tradeweb parent Refinitiv from Thomson Reuters Corp.

Affiliates of Refinitiv will continue to hold about 54 per cent of Tradeweb's outstanding common stock, according to filings.

Tradeweb, founded in 1996, builds and runs electronics markets for trading government bonds, derivatives, exchange-traded funds and other financial instruments over the counter. It handled an average of US$549 billion in daily trades in 2018, according to its IPO prospectus. JPMorgan Chase & Co, Citigroup Inc, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley led the offering. BLOOMBERG