How the MHA float kept on track in the wildest of times

Market debut sees accountancy firm shun private equity to make corporate history

Hello Rainmakers,

Keeping any float going requires nerves of steel. When the President of the USA starts a trade war, sending markets into turmoil, that asks for even more.

Accountancy firm MHA floated this week, raising £98m for an acquisitions war chest, sending the professional services world into a even frothier frenzy.

Also, why did chief executive Rakesh Shaunak walk away from a private equity deal that would have landed him upwards of £15m?

We spoke to the people behind the scenes who kept the show on the road.

As the ticker tape fluttered down from the skies onto the trading floor of the London Stock Exchange, the platform party celebrating the float of accountant group MHA would have allowed themselves a wry smile.

Not just at discovering that there isn’t actually a bell that is rung to start the day’s trading in the shares - it’s a button - but that they were making corporate history.

Two and a half years in the making, the long-awaited £271m initial public offering (IPO) is not only the largest by market cap, it’s also the chunkiest fundraise of primary and secondary capital of 2025, raising an acquisition war chest of £98m, for bolt-on strategic acquisitions and potential cross-border acquisitions, which may include other members of the Baker Tilly International Network.

Once the preserve of partners in chalk stripe suits, usually men of an advanced age, the accountancy profession has been playing with ownership models, that might work for the partners, but leave the next generation without a pathway to share in that prosperity.