Fashion giant Shein to file for £50bn London IPO

Online fashion giant Shein is getting ready to be listed on the London stock market. This means that people can buy and sell shares of the company. Shein is a big company that sells clothes and accessories online. It was started in China and now has its main office in Singapore. The London Stock Exchange, where companies are listed for people to buy shares, hasn't had many new companies joining in the past ten years. Shein's listing could be one of the biggest deals for the London Stock Exchange in a long time. This means that Shein's decision to join the London Stock Exchange is a big deal. Shein is preparing the necessary paperwork to be approved for the stock market listing. This paperwork is called an initial public offering (IPO) prospectus. It needs to be approved by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regulator. This process might happen this week or later this month. The value of Shein as a company could be around 66 billion US dollars, which is a lot of money. Shein has been thinking about listing its shares in both the US and the UK. However, it faced some difficulties in the US. Last year, there were concerns about the company using forced labor to make its clothes. Despite these challenges, the UK government and the London Stock Exchange have been working hard to get Shein to list in London. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, even had meetings with Shein's executive chairman to discuss this. Shein also owns the Missguided brand in the UK and made sales of £1.1 billion in the UK in 2022. Shein is now preparing to file a prospectus with the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK for approval. This is a big step towards Shein becoming a publicly traded company in London. If everything goes well, Shein could raise over £1 billion by selling shares to investors. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Morgan Stanley are helping Shein with this process.