UK's Pollen Street says exploring options, in talks about possible sale

By Amy-Jo Crowley and Anousha Sakoui

LONDON, Sept 23 (Reuters) - Pollen Street said on Wednesday it is exploring strategic options, including a take-private transaction and had begun preliminary talks with a limited number of parties about making a possible offer for the private capital firm.

London-listed Pollen Street issued a statement after Reuters reported it was working on options with an adviser as it seeks to gain asset management scale. Pollen Street's shares rose as much as 16.6% to 950p, their highest level since January.  

Pollen Street, which has £8.4 billion ($11.22 billion) of assets under management across private equity and private credit strategies, did not name the parties it was speaking to.

Reuters reported that potential buyers include mid-sized private equity firms as well as existing shareholder Wafra, which bought a minority stake in the business in 2020 through its investment platform Capital Constellation.

Wafra declined to comment.

Consolidation pressure is building across the asset management sector as mid-sized firms increasingly seek scale to compete for investor capital and absorb rising regulatory and operating costs. US asset manager Nuveen earlier this year bought Britain's Schroders in a £9.9 billion deal.

At Tuesday's close, shares in Pollen Street were down around 12% for the year but the rally on Wednesday brought the year-to-date return to 1.1%. 

Formed from the combination in 2022 of Honeycomb Investment Trust and its longstanding manager, Pollen Street Capital, the company's investments include stakes in financial services providers such as insurer Markerstudy, UK challenger bank Shawbrook and Dutch digital lender bunq.

($1 = 0.7485 pounds)     

(Reporting by Amy-Jo Crowley and Anousha Sakoui in London. Editing by Elisa Martinuzzi and Alexander Smith)