THG boss Matt Moulding: IPO regrets, he's had a few
Matt Moulding, the boss of The Hut Group (THG), has expressed his regret at listing the e-commerce company in London.
He has had a tough couple of months as shares in THG have tumbled. It is now worth less than half its value when it floated in September 2020.
In an interview at GQ Heroes 2021, Moulding commented: “If I could do it all again, I wouldn't IPO.”
“There are very few companies where an individual sets a company up. I've done it the right way. I've done nothing wrong. I've created 14,000 jobs, given a billion pounds to staff, who've sold most of their shares, done loads of things – everything in Britain, tried to support Britain – and, you know, it's just sucked from start to finish.”
He added: “There are scenarios where if you're not an individual leading a big company, then I think the UK market can work really well.”
“But there aren't any examples, I don't believe, where an individual brings a big company to a public market and it can go well, certainly as you get to a certain scale anyway. Normally you employ a CEO and a Chairman and they do it and the profile's not there.”
Moulding now wishes he’d IPO'd in America. “That's obvious. I didn't do it because I wanted to do everything in Britain. We create thousands and thousands of jobs.”
“For those of you that have ever been to Manchester, we're constantly building big buildings up there and infrastructure and I wanted to do everything here really – out of 14,000 staff we've probably got 12 [thousand] in the UK.”
He concluded: “And I didn't want to do the US route. Now, there's a reason I should have gone, and actually I'd have had no profile as well, which would have suited me. No one would have written on me if I'd have been listed in the US. But it just is what it is. Next year it will be a different lesson.”
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