UK's Wise is planning a US primary listing amid London stock market woes

Wise, a money transfer company, announced on Thursday that it will move its primary listing from London to the U.S., becoming the latest British firm to do so. Shares rose over 8%.

Wise had been exploring listing options in recent months, a trend seen on the London market due to stunted opportunities for growth and lower valuations.

Kristo Kaarmann said, "We think that the addition of an initial U.S. listed would help us to accelerate our mission as well as bring substantial strategic and captial market benefits for Wise and its owners."

In early trading, the shares of this money transfer company were up 8.7% to 1,177 pence. In the past 12 months, they have increased by about 40%.

Cobalt Holdings - a metals investor backed by Glencore - also canceled its plans to launch an IPO in London on Wednesday. According to a source, this was due to a lack demand.

Unilever has chosen Amsterdam as the primary listing for its ice cream business, while Shein, a fast fashion firm, is considering Hong Kong, after plans to launch an IPO in London were thwarted by Chinese regulatory hurdles.

Wise intends to tap into domestic institutional and retail investor in the U.S. to boost global demand for their services. Wise Platform is a low-cost money transfer service which Wise promotes as being fast.

Revolut is a British competitor to Wise, competing on features and pricing. It has aggressively expanded into the U.S. by taking advantage of the lucrative market that houses some of the largest financial institutions in the world.

Wise reported its earnings for the year, with a underlying profit of 282.1 million pounds ($382 millions) in the period. This was largely due to strong growth among customers and adoption of new accounts. ($1 = 0.7371 pound) (Reporting and editing by Janane Venkatraman, Christopher Cushing and Dhanush Vignesh in Bengaluru)

(source: Reuters)