A group of senior City figures is in talks to raise hundreds of millions of pounds for a new listed vehicle that would be used to target a major corporate takeover.
Sky News has learnt that JRJ Group, which was co-founded by the former Lehman Brothers executives Jeremy Isaacs and Roger Nagioff, is orchestrating talks with investors about the launch of a London-listed acquisition company.
TOMS Capital, which was established by former hedge fund manager Noam Gottesman, is also involved in the new venture, which has been codenamed Project Mayflower.
This weekend, City sources said that initial discussions with institutional investors about backing the vehicle had already got underway.
One of those approached about it said the talks were expected to be accelerated in the coming weeks amid signs of strong demand.
The group is said to be targeting an initial fundraising of about $500m, with scores of takeover targets in multiple industries likely to be reviewed.
They are understood to be particularly focused on bid targets worth between $2bn and $5bn.
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Jefferies, the investment bank, is involved in the listing plan.
One source said the founders had chosen London because of its investor-friendly structure for so-called cash shells.
The vehicle’s launch comes at a time when London’s depressed environment for initial public offerings (IPOs) has coincided with pressure on asset-owners such as private equity firms to generate liquidity from their portfolios.
This combination of factors had created “a generational opportunity to buy assets at attractive prices”, the source added.
Mayflower’s founders are expected to invest significant amounts of their own money in the venture to ensure alignment with external investors.
Since leaving Lehman prior to its collapse exacerbated the global financial meltdown in 2008, Mr Isaacs and Mr Nagioff have enjoyed financial success through JRJ.
The firm was a big shareholder in Marex, a commodities broker which listed in New York last year at a valuation of over $1.3bn.
Mr Gottesman, meanwhile, has founded a string of so-called ‘blank cheque’ companies, most notable Nomad Holdings, which bought the frozen foods brand Birds Eye’s owner in a €2.6bn deal in 2015.
There have been modest signs of a revival in the London listings market in the last fortnight, with challenger bank Shawbrook Group making a strong debut this week.
Princes, the tinned food producer, had a more lacklustre start to life as a publicly traded company, with its stock closing broadly flat after opening at 475p-per-share.
Cash shells, or special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), enjoyed a multiyear boom in the US, financing takeovers of companies including Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and electric vehicle manufacturers such as Lucid and Nikola.
Many of the companies which went public in this way, including the DNA testing business 23andMe and British online car retailer Cazoo, subsequently went bust.
A number of new SPACs have emerged in recent months amid signs of renewed investor appetite for the vehicles.
None of those involved with the plan could be reached for comment on Saturday.
