British luxury-car maker Aston Martin Holdings (UK) Ltd. reaffirmed its IPO plans and announced the board members ahead of its London public offering, naming former Coca-Cola Co. executive Penny Hughes as the non-executive chair of its board as well as the board's nomination committee.
Hughes, who has served on boards of companies across the consumer, media, technology and finance sectors, is a chair of Gym Group PLC and is a nonexecutive director of Superdry PLC. She is also the chair of iQSA, a private venture between Goldman Sachs and the Wellcome Trust. She was previously a nonexecutive director of The Royal Bank of Scotland PLC, Wm Morrison Supermarkets PLC, and Vodafone PLC, among others.
Other nonexecutive board members include Richard Solomons, former CEO of InterContinental Hotels Group PLC, as senior independent director and chair of the board's audit and risk committee; Imelda Walsh as chair of the board's remuneration committee; Peter Espenhahn; Lord Matthew Carrington; and Professor Tensie Whelan.
Aston Martin President and CEO Andy Palmer and the company CFO Mark Wilson will serve as executive directors.
Existing Aston Martin shareholders, including InvestIndustrial, ADEEM Investment Co. K.S.C.C. and Primewagon, will sell off some of their secondary shares as the company intends to have a free float of at least 25% of its issued share capital on the London Stock Exchange. The company intends to offer an over-allotment option of up to 15% of the total share offer.
To represent the existing shareholders, Dante Razzano will continue as an Aston Martin director on behalf of Investindustrial, which will also add Peter Rogers as its second representative to the board. Adeem/Primewagon shareholder group's Amr Ali Abdallah AbouelSeoud, Najeeb Al Humaidhi and Mahmoud Samy Mohamed Ali El Sayed also will remain directors, with Saoud Al Humaidhi joining the board.
Daimler AG, which will not sell-down its about 4.9% in Aston Martin, has agreed to a 12-month lock-up of its converted ordinary shares after the listing, Aston Martin said.
The public offering, which would give the maker of iconic James Bond cars a market value of over $6 billion, will comprise a premium listing on the official list and admission to trading on the London Stock Exchange's main market for listed securities.
Price range for the IPO, the maximum number of shares to be sold and any other outstanding information will be updated in due course and made available in the prospectus, which Aston Martin expects to release on or around Sept. 20. Following the publication of the prospectus and a book-building process, the company will calculate the final offer price of the IPO and announce it in early October.
Aston Martin, which reaffirmed its 2018 operational outlook, said it intends to target institutional investors in the U.K. and elsewhere, except those in the U.S., for the offering.