Digital challenger bank Oaknorth has appointed former City watchdog boss Lord Adair Turner to be its chair as it mulls an IPO.
Turner, who replaces outgoing chair Cyrus Ardalan, led the Financial Services Authority from 2008 until its dissolution in 2013 and previously sat on Oaknorth’s board as senior independent director until 2017.
Rishi Khosla, the bank’s co-founder and chief executive, told the Financial Times that Turner brought “extensive financial services experience”, as well as “a number of successes in the climate space”.
The lender launched in 2015 and focuses on funding small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Khosla, a Conservative party donor, told City A.M. last month that SMEs had generally been underserved by lenders since he launched Oaknorth in 2015.
The firm recently announced a new range of products and services, including business savings and current accounts, that would put it in more direct competition with the country’s major banks.
The addition of more regulatory experience to the board comes as Oaknorth, which is backed by Japan’s SoftBank, considers a public listing.
“It’s something we may look at going forward,” Khosla told the paper. “In terms of which venue, when and if we decide to go public, we’ll evaluate the various options. We’re incredible proponents [of making the] UK a really strong place to scale businesses.”
The London Stock Exchange is in need of more big-ticket listings amid a slump in capital markets activity.
Just 23 firms listed in London in the first nine months of 2023, down from 45 last year.
“Clearly the macro environment for a listing today is not attractive,” Khosla said. He added that Oaknorth was considering ways of listing across multiple exchanges to access a wider range of investors.
Khosla noted one “big gap” between London and New York’s capital markets being a lack of available growth capital in the UK.
Oaknorth became one of the UK’s most valuable fintechs after its most recent funding round led by Softbank’s Vision Fund, which valued the firm at $2.8bn in 2019.
The bank notched pretax profits of £152m last year, up from £134.5mn in 2021.
City A.M. approached Oaknorth for comment.
