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Johannesburg - Virgin Active wants to hold an initial public offering in Johannesburg by the end of June this year, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
Virgin Active has appointed five banks, all of them with operations in South Africa, to help it manage the share sale, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified as the information is private.
Virgin Active has 263 clubs in nine countries with more than 1.3 million members, according to its website. It has 114 outlets in South Africa, more than in any other country.
Nick Fox, a spokesperson for Richard Branson’s Virgin Group in London, declined to comment after receiving e- mailed questions. A Johannesburg-based spokesperson for Virgin Active declined to comment.
Goldman Sachs, UBS AG, Standard Bank, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley, which has a joint venture with Rand Merchant Bank in Johannesburg, are the banks appointed by Virgin Active, one of the people said. Spokespeople for the banks declined to comment.
The gym chain started meeting with bankers in Johannesburg in the second week of January in order to choose institutions to manage the IPO, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
Virgin Active may be valued at £1.5bn (R26.29bn), Sky News reported earlier, without saying where it got the figure.
If the IPO goes through, this will be the third successful venture, partly owned by the Virgin Group, to have sold shares publicly within a matter of months, reported Reuters.
Last year, Virgin America and Virgin Money listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange and London stock exchange respectively, where the domestic low-cost airliner was valued at $1.35bn, while the British bank netted $214.70m for its co-owners Sir Branson and Wilbur Ross, a US financier.
CVC Capital declined to comment on the report. Virgin Group and Virgin Active could not immediately be reached for comment outside regular business hours.
- Bloomberg and Reuters.
