Clouds gather over Darktrace’s £3bn stock-exchange listing

Darktrace, the cybersecurity star, is planning to list on the London Stock Exchange. It is a promising company, but its top shareholder is in legal trouble. Matthew Partridge reports.

Mike Lynch
Founding shareholder Mike Lynch is battling criminal and civil charges
(Image credit: © Alamy)

Deliveroo’s “disastrous” debut “damaged London’s reputation” for big tech flotations, says The Guardian. But now the City is about to receive a “shot in the arm”: cybersecurity firm Darktrace is planning a £3bn listing on the London Stock Exchange. Founded in 2013 by mathematicians from the University of Cambridge, artificial intelligence (AI) experts and cyberspecialists from GCHQ, Darktrace creates digital-security products that “self-learn and self-heal” to enable businesses to “stay one step ahead of hackers and viruses”. Darktrace has already secured a range of customers and has an advisory board that includes the former MI5 director-general Lord Evans of Weardale.

Unfortunately, it is also beset by fraud allegations against its founding shareholder Mike Lynch, say James Cook and Matthew Field in The Daily Telegraph. Darktrace has admitted that the negative publicity concerning criminal (in the US) and civil (in the UK) charges against Lynch, which stem from his time as CEO of Autonomy, could undermine the group’s reputation and share price. Lynch, who is fighting extradition to the US, denies any wrongdoing in both cases.

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Dr Matthew Partridge
Shares editor, MoneyWeek

Matthew graduated from the University of Durham in 2004; he then gained an MSc, followed by a PhD at the London School of Economics.

He has previously written for a wide range of publications, including the Guardian and the Economist, and also helped to run a newsletter on terrorism. He has spent time at Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and the consultancy Lombard Street Research.

Matthew is the author of Superinvestors: Lessons from the greatest investors in history, published by Harriman House, which has been translated into several languages. His second book, Investing Explained: The Accessible Guide to Building an Investment Portfolio, is published by Kogan Page.

As senior writer, he writes the shares and politics & economics pages, as well as weekly Blowing It and Great Frauds in History columns He also writes a fortnightly reviews page and trading tips, as well as regular cover stories and multi-page investment focus features.

Follow Matthew on Twitter: @DrMatthewPartri