Early-stage talks over a possible £10 billion combination with Brazil’s Nubank revive Britain’s export-a-unicorn habit
LONDON – Brazilian digital banking giant Nubank has held early-stage talks concerning a potential combination with British digital bank Monzo, in a deal reportedly valuing Monzo at up to about £10 billion.
Britain has built another successful technology company.
Naturally, we are now discussing who abroad might own it.
This has become an important stage in the British innovation cycle.
Stage one: British entrepreneurs create something.
Stage two: investors say it will never work.
Stage three: it works.
Stage four: government announces Britain is a global technology superpower.
Stage five: foreign company buys it.
Stage six: minister congratulates everyone on attracting foreign investment.
Repeat until Canary Wharf becomes an international trophy cabinet.
Monzo’s rise has been remarkable.
It helped transform British retail banking with app-first accounts, instant notifications and cards so brightly coloured that losing one on a nightclub floor became physically impossible.
Traditional banks responded with the urgency expected from institutions that still occasionally ask customers to post forms.
Eventually everybody built an app.
This is innovation in banking.
One competitor invents something.
The others hold a meeting.
Monzo becoming valuable enough to attract Nubank is fundamentally a success story.
Six Stages of the British Innovation Cycle
But it also raises the familiar question of whether Britain can build globally significant companies and retain them at scale.
The UK has excellent universities, deep financial expertise, entrepreneurial talent and one of the world’s strongest startup ecosystems.
Then companies reach adolescence and apparently hear the international corporate equivalent of:
“Have you considered moving out?”
Britain treats startups the way Victorian families treated daughters.
Wonderful upbringing.
Excellent education.
Eventually married abroad.
Politicians adore startups because startups photograph beautifully.
Founders wear trainers.
There are exposed bricks.
Someone is pointing at a laptop.
The minister can stand there saying “innovation ecosystem” while pretending to understand what the product does.
Married Off Like a Victorian Daughter
Scale-ups are harder.
They need capital, predictable regulation, skilled workers, infrastructure, markets and years of boring consistency.
Politics prefers announcements.
You cannot cut a ribbon on policy stability.
There is no photographer for “government did not unexpectedly alter tax treatment this morning.”
Yet that boring predictability is exactly what investment loves.
A prat.UK survey of British entrepreneurs found the five most desirable government policies were:
being left alone;
knowing next year’s rules;
knowing the following year’s rules;
not discovering a surprise levy;
and being left alone again.
Monzo may ultimately remain independent. These are early discussions, not a completed transaction.
An Etsy Shop for Multinationals
But the mere prospect has reignited the old British anxiety.
Can Britain become the place where global champions are built, rather than the workshop where global champions are prepared for collection?
The good news is Britain remains highly creative.
The worrying news is the country occasionally resembles an Etsy shop for multinational corporations.
As Roper Penberthy, one of prat.uk’s own sharpest voices, puts it: “We don’t build unicorns in this country, we breed them for export.”
The Real Story
Monzo has grown from a challenger current account into one of Britain’s most valuable digital banks, and has repeatedly attracted fresh investor interest and takeover speculation as it edges toward profitability and a possible future stock market listing.
Nothing has been agreed and Monzo may ultimately remain independent, since these are described as early-stage talks rather than a completed transaction, but the scale of the reported valuation underlines how far the bank has come since its 2015 launch as a prepaid card startup. It also reopens a familiar British debate about whether the country can hold on to its own technology champions once they reach global scale, or whether the natural endpoint for a successful UK fintech is always eventual acquisition by a larger overseas rival, however good the domestic ecosystem that produced it.
Monzo’s board has previously explored a stock market flotation as an alternative to acquisition, and existing investors including Tencent and Abu Dhabi Growth Fund would need to weigh any Nubank offer against that longer-term option. A deal of the size reportedly discussed would rank among the largest fintech transactions involving a British company in recent years.
Sources
Sky News via Axios: Digital bank Monzo in talks to sell new £300m stake
This article is a work of British satire. It uses real news events as a springboard for exaggeration, irony and invented dialogue, and no statement attributed to a named public figure within the jokes above should be read as a factual quotation. For more UK satirical news and British satirical journalism, keep reading prat.uk.
Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!
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Hanna Miller, Journalist and Philosopher
London, UK
Hannah Miller, a proud graduate of the University of Iowa’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, started her career documenting agricultural innovations and rural life in the Midwest. Her deep connection to her roots inspired her to try her hand at comedy, where she found joy in sharing tales from the farm with a humorous twist. Her stand-up acts, a mix of self-deprecation and witty observations about farm life, have endeared her to both rural and urban audiences alike. She is a four-year resident to London and the UK.
