US investor Fidelity manages trillions of dollars in assets and is negotiating a £200m fundraising for Starling, Sky News reported.
Starling Bank has achieved break-even last October and with expectations to be monthly profitable on an operating profit basis.
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After that JPMorgan and Lloyds Banking Group expressed interest in an acquisition of the digital bank. However, CEO Anne Boden decided to go for an IPO.
“Big banks taking interest in Starling is not new,” Boden told Financial News last month. “I’ve always said that I didn’t do this to sell to a big bank, and nothing’s changed. We still have our sights on an IPO.”
If the fundraising goes smoothly for Starling, the new valuation will likely reach $1.5 billion, according to Business Insider.
Fidelity’s involvement is the most notable but “A number of other blue-chip external investors” are also in discussions with Starling, according to Sky sources.
Starling manages more than two million customer accounts, of which just over 300,000 are small business customers.
