Good morning from Hong Kong.
Shein, the China-founded fast fashion juggernaut that has won over hundreds of millions of global shoppers, is reportedly seeking permission to sell shares in London after abandoning plans for a New York listing in the face of “regulatory hurdles and pushback from U.S. lawmakers.”
The company, purveyor of ultra-low-priced apparel and renowned for its TikTok marketing savvy, had high hopes for a blockbuster U.S. IPO in November when it filed confidentially with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a New York debut.
The offering promised to be one of the biggest IPOs in years. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley piled in as lead underwriters. Donald Tang, Shein’s Los Angeles-based executive chairman, moved to Washington to lead the company’s lobbying blitz.
But Shein’s charm offensive ran headlong into a wall of resistance. Politicians from both parties called for investigations into working conditions at the thousands of Chinese factories to which Shein subcontracts and demanded more information about where the company sources cotton. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has increased scrutiny of low-value packages sent from overseas directly to U.S. consumers under the “de minimis” provision, which exempts these shipments from tariffs and other trade rules. Customs officials escalated the crackdown by suspending several brokers from participating in a program that expedites such shipments.
Shein hasn’t withdrawn its U.S. IPO application. But the SEC hasn’t advanced it. And so, early this year, Shein shifted the focus of its listing bid to London.
Shein will get a warmer welcome there. The London Stock Exchange has been losing listings to New York post-Brexit, and U.K. finance officials fear their bourse has too few fast-growing tech companies. The LSE raised a meager $1 billion last year, the lowest level in decades, according to Bloomberg. By comparison, IPOs on the Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange raised a total of $24.1 billion last year.
In its latest private fundraising, Shein had a valuation of $66 billion; some analysts think an LSE offering could rake in $5 billion to $10 billion, which could make it the second-largest in the exchange’s history. Britain’s Sky News reports that the U.K. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt met recently with Tang to show his support.
Shein must also win over regulators in Beijing. The company moved its headquarters from Nanjing to Singapore in 2022 and doesn’t sell to customers in China. But Shein’s thousands of suppliers are based mainly in China, so the company needs to seek approval from the China Securities Regulatory Commission for an offshore listing.
Perhaps the greater long-run threat to Shein’s continued growth is falling out of fashion with global customers. Saturday Night Live last week skewered the willful obliviousness of supposedly woke fast fashion shoppers in a parody ad for a Shein- and Temu-like company called “Xiemu.”
The parody ad’s snarky tagline: “Don’t worry about it!”
More news below.
Clay Chandler
clay.chandler@fortune.com
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