A New York fairytale: talking about the London stock market doesn’t help – and the Big Apple is no Nirvana, says RUTH SUNDERLAND
- THG founder Matt Molding has turned complaints into a business art form
- His complaint is that he regrets floating THG on LSE instead of New York
- British companies that went public in the US have seen their value fall by an average of 40%
Matt Molding, the muscular Mancunian founder of THG, formerly known as The Hut Group, doesn’t look like a victim.
Far from it, especially in the photos of the multimillionaire online health and beauty boss with his mahogany brown torso on display.
He is the archetypal story of social mobility. From an ordinary background, raised in a house with a toilet outside, he created THG through his own hard work and enterprise. But in social media blogs, he has turned complaints into a corporate art form.
His resentment is directed particularly at the establishment and the stock market in the UK, the country where he built his business and made his fortune.
To describe THG’s performance in the London stock market since its IPO in 2020 as disappointing is an understatement. Shares are trading at 65 pence, peaking at almost £8. Molding’s response is to adopt a siege mentality, a “THG against the world mentality”, in his own words.
No Nirvana: Most UK companies floating to the US since 2012 have seen their value fall by an average of 40 percent
His main, much-repeated complaint is regret for taking THG to the London Stock Market instead of New York.
“The way we have been treated since joining the London Stock Exchange has done nothing but fuel our insatiable fighting spirit. It’s certainly not an experience I would recommend,” he says. This disdain for the UK is common in the tech world. Apparently, only here are wealth managers clumsy enough to annoy founders by inquiring about things like earnings or dividends before committing their depositors’ money.
Moulding’s belief seems to be that THG was hampered by retrograde elements in Britain and would have thrived as it deserved if it had only been listed in the US.
Wait a second. Maybe he should talk to Nick Jones, the founder of Soho House, who went to Wall Street in 2021. Since then, shares have more than halved.
Maybe a chinwag with Sir Richard Branson? His Virgin Orbit satellite company listed on the Nasdaq a little over a year ago, accompanied by a major taradiddle, including the landing of a 70-foot rocket in Times Square.
That did not prevent the share price from plummeting after a failed satellite launch in January. The company is now in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. What about the experience of Stephen Fitzpatrick, the entrepreneur behind energy company Ovo, whose Vertical Aerospace flying taxi business is down nearly 85 percent since the US float?
Then there’s Dr. Ali Parsa, the British-Iranian entrepreneur who listed his Babylon Healthcare company on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021, only to see it drop from around £3bn to just over £100m.
These companies are different from THG and from each other. It is clear that individual factors play a role behind their experiences. But it suggests that the idea that THG would certainly have fared better in New York should be taken with a serving of sodium chloride.
Most UK companies that have moved to the US since 2012 have seen their value fall by an average of 40 percent.
Molding’s story taps into a deeper undercurrent that portrays the UK as an old-fashioned anti-entrepreneurship country.
It’s true, Britain has been bad at developing a vibrant tech sector, partly because we’ve stupidly allowed some of our best companies to be sold off to foreign predators.
But talking about the London market won’t help – and New York isn’t Nirvana.