Metro Bank, Britain's first new high street bank in over a century, expects to float on the stock market around 2013 to raise some 200 million pounds ($298 million) in order to fund further growth, its chairman said. Anthony Thomson told Reuters the exact timing and size of the offering, aimed at funding the lender's expansion after an initial 75 million pounds of funding runs out, would depend on the speed of the bank's expansion.
It is expected to open its first two branches in the second quarter but is targeting 20 to 35 branches by around 2013. "Our business plan says the 75 million (pounds) will enable us to grow the way we want to until year three," Thomson, the bank's chairman and co-founder alongside US entrepreneur Vernon Hill, said in an interview.
"To continue to fund the rate and pace of growth we will look for a further 200 million (pounds) which will probably come out of an IPO. But the rate and pace of growth depends on the rate and pace of payback from each store." Metro, the first new lender since the financial crisis to be granted a full license by UK regulators, is one of a string of new entrants seeking to break into a competitive retail banking sector battered by the crisis and the near-collapse of some of its best-known names.