Deliveroo boss set for a £350m payday with food delivery firm valued at £5.1bn ahead of blockbuster float
The boss of Deliveroo is set to gain a fortune of more than £350million from the food delivery firm’s blockbuster float.
William Shu, who founded the business eight years ago, owns a 6.9 per cent stake in the company, documents show.
It means his shares could be worth at least £350million if Deliveroo is valued at about £5.1billion in its upcoming float.
A tasty sum: William Shu, who founded Deliveroo eight years ago, owns a 6.9 per cent stake in the company, meaning his shares could be worth at least £350m
That would place Shu, 41, among the 400 richest people in Britain, according to the Sunday Times Rich List, with a fortune roughly equal to the Queen’s.
Bankers from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citi, Jefferies and Numis are working on the deal and reportedly considering a valuation as high as £8billion, Sky News reported.
That could mean Shu’s stake is worth as much as £550million.
Deliveroo declined to comment on the figure but confirmed Shu’s holding in the company.
Another shareholder set to be in the money is internet giant Amazon, which invested in the British firm last year and owns a 16.2 per cent stake, potentially worth between £830million and £1.3billion.
Investment firms Index Ventures and DST Global also have stakes that would be worth hundreds of millions of pounds. Deliveroo is expected to list in London this year but has not said when.
It was most recently valued at about £5.1billion in a fundraising this month, when it secured a £132million boost from investors.
American-born entrepreneur Shu is a former investment banker who worked at Morgan Stanley and then a hedge fund.
After moving from New York to London, Shu claims he found it ‘nearly impossible to get great quality food delivered’.
He founded Deliveroo with school pal Greg Orlowski, a software developer, in 2013 promising ‘proper food, proper delivery’.
It now works with some 110,000 riders and 140,000 restaurants globally, serving countries including France, Belgium, Spain, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Kuwait.
The company makes money from fees levied from restaurants and customers, and employs 2,000 staff.
Deliveroo’s main rivals are Just Eat and Uber Eats. All three’s sales have been turbo-charged during the pandemic, as families have spent more money on takeaways.
In its recent fundraising, Deliveroo said it believes online delivery is ‘a large, growing market with low online penetration, which presents a significant opportunity’.
It has also teamed up with grocers such as Waitrose, Aldi and Co-op to deliver shopping during the crisis.