Visma hesitation tests London’s IPO revival
Plans for what would be London’s biggest float in years are being held, as a brutal sell-off in global software stocks forces private equity to rethink.
Visma, the €19bn (£16.6bn) software group backed by Hg Capital, may delay a London listing until the second half of the year, after markets turned sharply against the sector.
The move comes as hedge funds pile into short positions against software stocks, driving steep losses across listed peers and complicating what had been shaping up as a rare coup for the City.
The sell-off followed Anthropic’s release on Monday of a legal productivity tool designed to automate tasks like contract reviews, non-disclosure agreement triage, compliance checks and straight forward legal responses.
The firm stressed the software will not provide legal advice, and claimed outputs should be reviewed by qualified proffessionals.
Even so, the market reaction was sharp and swift. For investors, it seems the concern is whether expensive data subscriptions and legal software tools become easier and cheaper to replace, as general-purpose AI improves.
A market window that may not exist
Visma has been weighing a London float since late last year, with advisers hoping to capitalise on a tentative recovery in UK IPO activity followingva strong finish to 2025.
A €20bn-plus listing would have been the clearest sign yet that the capital could still attract large, high-quality tech firms.
But that sentiment has since deteriorated, as software stocks have been hit by fears that new AI tools could compress margins across the sector.
The Nasdaq took a huge tumble this week, while the iShares Expanded Tech Software ETF is down over 20 per cent this year.
Behind the scenes, hedge funds have turned bearish, with short sellers making an estimated $24bn betting against software stocks so far this year, according to S3 Partners.
Investors, it seems, are increasingly treating the sector as structurally vulnerable, rather than cyclically weak. This backdrop makes pricing a large IPO somewhat difficult.
London’s bottleneck
Hg has owned Visma since 2006, backing its expansion through hundreds of acquisitions and repeatedly rolling its stake into newer funds.
This long-term ownership has given the buyout firm the flexibility that public markets often lack.
Visma was last valued at €19bn in a private share sale back in 2023, after shelving an earlier IPO in favour of bringing in institutional investors like Jane Street and Altaroc.
Hg still controls around 70 per cent of the business alongside co-investors like Singapore’s GIC, and US firm TPG.
This lack of forced exit timeline gives Hg the ability to wait for a cleaner market, even if that means London misses out in the short term.
London’s IPO revival remains narrow, fragile and heavily dependent on a handful of large transactions landing successfully.
If software remains out of favour into 2026, that pipeline could thin again, just as momentum was returning.
Visma declined to comment.