Bankers to Hastings, the car insurer, have valued the group’s imminent flotation at between £1.17bn to £1.4bn despite choppy stock market conditions.
The group, which was founded by the insurance tycoon, Neil Utley, who is leaving the board as part of the deal, is led by Gary Hoffman, who was parachuted in to run Northern Rock in 2008 after its credit crunch bailout.
Hastings is one of several private companies pressing ahead with plans to join the stock market via a public sale of shares despite the volatile markets. Others include Worldpay, the payments processing group led by Sir Michael Rake, Equiniti, the finance and administration services company, and housebuilder Countryside.
Hoffman and the management team have attended roadshows with institutions for several days. As part of the deal, Goldman Sachs and the founder shareholders will sell a portion of their shares. The total value of the share offer could be as high as £390m.
If the deal goes ahead, Goldman Sachs, which recently bought 50% of the group, will make a massive return on its investment. The banking firm and the founder shareholders, including Utley, are subject to a lock-out period of 180 days in relation to the shares they own in the group following the formal offer.
Goldman Sachs paid about £150m for its Hastings stake in 2013 and could see that investment worth almost as much as £700m if the deal goes ahead at the top of the range.
Utley, who still has up to 15% of the stock, would see that shareholding valued at up to £210m at the top of the range.
Despite founding the group and being its largest individual shareholder, Utley is not mentioned in the 16-page intention to float document that accompanied the company’s statement last month that it was looking to raise up to £400m in the stock market.
Although the roadshow is going well, some potential investors are sceptical about how quickly the group’s profits have grown over the last couple of years.
Hastings is one of two companies coming to market with an all-male main board. The other is Worldpay. Mervyn Davies, the architect of a government initiative to increase the number of women in the boardroom, has described the Hastings and Worldpay situations as disappointing.
He said he believed potential investors would take note of the absence of senior women when making their decisions about whether to buy shares in the groups.
