Worldpay bosses share £480 million in 2015’s biggest stock market float
Top managers at Worldpay have landed a £480 million paper fortune as the payments processing firm made its public debut in London’s biggest float of the year.
Around 300 top management at the firm owning a 9.9% stake will cash in on the float, including chief executive Philip Jansen, who joined just over two years ago.
His stake is worth an estimated £50 million.
Private equity owners Advent and Bain Capital, which bought Worldpay from Royal Bank of Scotland in 2010 for £2 billion, will receive proceeds of £1.2 billion and see their combined stake cut to 47.8%.
All of Worldpay’s 4500 staff will share in the windfall with longer servers receiving £6000 in shares or cash.
The shares floated at 240p, rising 3% or 7.25p to 247.25p amid strong institutional demand for the shares — giving Worldpay a market value of over £4.8 billion.
Worldpay traces its history back to 1989, when it was an electronic payments firm known as Streamline.
It was bought by RBS in 2002, which renamed it.
After the taxpayer bail-out of the bank, RBS had to sell it to comply with European state aid rules.
