Klarna investors have been asked to indicate their interest in selling their shares by the start of next month, which also indicates that the Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) giant is set to launch a listing on the United States, valuing it at around $20 billion.
Sky News has learned that shareholders in one of Europe’s biggest fintechs have been given until February 5 to register and sell their shares in its imminent initial public offering (IPO).
Banking sources also said late Wednesday that Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, two of the main banks participating in the IPO, would release analytics on the shares in the coming days – another sign that a listing is imminent.
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Klarna, which is based in Sweden but now has 85 million customers worldwide, announced in November that it had filed documents with U.S. regulators for a public listing of its shares.
Its valuation is expected to be in the $15 billion to $20 billion range, although a number of the company’s existing shareholders believe the price could be significantly higher than that.
Klarna has created a UK-registered holding company as part of the journey to a public listing, with more than a dozen banks now hired to work on it.
Last week, Klarna announced an expanded partnership with Stripe, the payments group, to bring its products to a wider population of consumers.
Klarna, which employs around 5,000 people, was founded by Chief Executive Sebastian Siemiatkowski, who also set up a new holding company in Britain last year.
However, its listing in the United States caused further disappointment on the London Stock Exchange, which was pushing for its listing in the United Kingdom.
Klarna has recovered from a torrid period in which it was forced to cut its valuation to $6.7bn (£5.3bn) in a 2022 funding round.
It was once valued at $46bn (£36.6bn) and had the backing of investors including SoftBank’s Vision Fund, Sequoia Capital and Mubadala, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund.
Klarna declined to comment.