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LONDON, March 31 (Reuters) - British finance minister Rishi
Sunak said he was not embarrassed by the plunge in the shares of
Deliveroo in their trading debut on Wednesday, after he
endorsed the company as a British success story.
Shares in food delivery service Deliveroo plunged by as much
as 30%, slicing more than 2 billion pounds ($2.76 billion) off
the company's valuation in a blow to Britain's ambitions to
attract fast-growing tech companies to the London market.
The highly-anticipated listing, the biggest on the London
market in a decade, had earlier been hailed by Sunak as a "true
British tech success story" that could clear the way for more
initial public offerings (IPO) by technology companies.
Sunak was on Wednesday asked by ITV political editor Robert
Peston if he now felt embarrassed. He said: "Gosh, no... share
prices go up, share prices go down. We should celebrate success
in this country."
"You talk about Deliveroo, I think I remember Facebook
when it first IPO'd - I think the share price halved over
the next few months, and then obviously we all know what
happened after that."
Some of Britain's biggest investment companies shunned
Deliveroo's listing, citing concerns about gig-economy working
conditions and the share structure.
($1 = 0.7251 pounds)
(Reporting by Andy Bruce, additional Abhinav Ramnarayan;
editing by William James)