Darktrace boss blames employee share rules for London exit
The boss of Darktrace has said that the London Stock Exchange’s restrictive rules over offering options and equity to staff drove its decision to leave the UK bourse in 2023, saying it limited its ability to attract and retain talent.
Jill Popelka told a Bloomberg event that the “limitations” meant that as a London-listed company it was unable to give staff members equity, which the company has since been able to do more freely now its ownership is based in the US.
Asked whether the ability to recruit people and offer stock options factored into its decision to abandon its London listing, she said: “It is different. There are limitations over how much equity you can provide an employee in a UK company when you’re regulated here in the UK.
“Those limitations don’t exist in the US, and so we have a lot more ability to share equity with our employees, which is nice.”
Fast growing tech firm fleeing London
Darktrace was one of the UK’s most feted and fastest growing public companies before its shareholders approved a $5bn offer from the private equity firm Thoma Bravo to take the company private in 2023.
The Cambridge-based firm, which specialises in providing cybersecurity to businesses, became the first of a string of promising companies to be taken private by US buyout giants, who viewed London-listed firms low valuations as an opportunity to bolster their portfolios.
Darktrace’s departure from London’s bourse is still held up as one of the most painful examples of the UK’s struggles either to encourage its largest private companies to list in the UK, or retain them in the country’s capital markets once they have.
But Popelka did not rule out the prospect of a return to the London Stock Exchange when Thoma Bravo starts to examine its exit options for an exit.
“There are all sorts of considerations. Orlando [Bravo, cofounder of Thoma Bravo] has been here in Europe quite a bit, and in London specificially,” she said. “And he’s talked about really appreciating the market that we are in today, and his involvement in it.”