Closing summary: Reddit hopes to raise $500m in stock market float
Reddit will give bankers and investors a sense of whether demand for new stock market issues has picked up, after an extended slowdown.
The US social media company has been slower to shoot for profits than some other rivals, but it is still aiming for a tasty big tech valuation at more than $6bn, according to a filing on Monday.
The hoped-for valuation would value Reddit at $6.4bn at the top end – although that is lower than the $10bn valuation it achieved at its last fundraising in 2021.
In other business news today:
Bitcoin hit a new record above $72,000 for the first time.
Heathrow airport saw further growth last month with its busiest-ever February, as passenger numbers surpassed pre-Covid levels.
People from ethnic minority backgrounds now lead 12 of the UK’s top 100 listed companies, according to a wide ranging review into diversity in business, up from the seven recorded last year.
Messaging app Telegram has 900m users and is making “hundreds of millions of dollars” in revenues, according to its secretive founder.
UK culture secretary Lucy Frazer has received reports submitted by competition and media regulators ahead of deciding whether a more detailed regulatory probe is needed into a planned £600mn takeover of one of the Daily Telegraph owner by a UAE-backed consortium.
You can continue to follow the Guardian’s live coverage from around the world:
In the UK, Tice says he will be ‘surprised’ if Reform UK does not get more Tory MPs joining
In the US, Katie Britt’s State of the Union story about child sex abuse criticized by victim
In our coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war, Jens Stoltenberg says Sweden joining Nato shows Putin’s war strategy has failed
In our coverage of the Middle East crisis, the European Commission is ‘hopeful’ first boat from Cyprus carrying aid to Gaza will set sail soon
Thank you for reading today, and please join us tomorrow for more of the same. JJ
Europe is unprepared for war with Russia or the risk that Donald Trump could withdraw the US from Nato and needs to ramp up spending on defence equipment, the boss of Airbus has said.
Guillaume Faury, the chief executive of Europe’s biggest aerospace and defence company, said it was a “defining moment” for the continent’s defence industry, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 brought war to western Europe’s borders.
“We are coming from peacetime,” Faury told the Guardian. “I don’t think Europe has yet the level of preparedness that you would need for a conflict between Europe and Russia. Let’s call a spade a spade. And it seems like Russia is ramping up its defence capabilities.
You can read the interview here:
