It was supposed to be London's biggest stock-market debut of the decade. Visma, a €19bn Norwegian accounting and payroll software company, had planned to go public in early 2026, ending years of private ownership under UK buyout firm Hg. For London — battered by years of companies fleeing to New York — a successful Visma IPO would have been a milestone. Instead, the listing has been shelved.
The reason isn't anything wrong with Visma itself. The company is still growing roughly 20% a year, has expanded across 28 countries through 170 acquisitions, and posted around €270m in quarterly earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation. The problem is what's happening *around* it. A sharp sell-off in software-as-a-service stocks — nicknamed the 'SaaSpocalypse' — has crushed the valuations of companies that Wall Street had long deemed highly predictable. The trigger: advances in artificial intelligence that suddenly raise the possibility that AI tools can replicate what payroll, tax-compliance and accounting software do, especially for smaller businesses whose needs are less complex than, say, a multinational insurer's.
Here's the catch: Hg doesn't have to sell. Most private equity firms operate on rigid timelines — raise a fund, buy companies, exit within roughly a decade, return cash to investors. Hg, which now manages over $100bn in assets, has built an unusual model around its 'long-term' winners. It bought Visma two decades ago for around £380m and has rolled the stake between its own successive funds, last summer using cash from one vehicle to repay another. That flexibility lets Hg wait out market storms instead of dumping assets at depressed prices. As one source close to the firm put it, listing now would only sell a small portion of the holding anyway.
But the delay isn't costless. Hg's investment trust, which holds part of the Visma stake, has fallen 26% this year, and the firm is heavily indebted, with average net debt of more than seven times earnings as of December. If software valuations stay depressed, the leverage that magnifies returns in good times will magnify pain in bad ones. One analyst warned that in a 'highly polarised' market split between AI winners and losers, that gearing could force write-downs across portfolio companies. A $5bn fund holding part of the Visma stake faces a loan roughly equal to about half the holdings' value — meaning further sector declines would make markdowns far more painful.
The broader question hovering over the whole episode is whether software is entering a 'different valuation paradigm.' In public markets, financial-management software groups currently trade at about 10 times forward earnings. The 2023 deal that valued Visma at €19bn implied roughly 20 times — and recent indications suggest advisers think a fair price now might be closer to €30bn at IPO, while some investors think the realistic figure is more than €20bn. That gap between what sellers want and what buyers will pay is the real reason IPOs get postponed. Visma's bigger size makes the gap even harder to close.
For London, the delay is another setback in a long struggle to attract listings. For investors, it's a live test of whether AI permanently compresses the value of software companies — or whether this is, like past tech panics, a temporary repricing that long-term owners like Hg are wise to wait out.
A €19bn Norwegian accounting-software giant was supposed to deliver London's biggest IPO in years. Then AI showed up — and Wall Street started doubting whether software companies have a future at all.
Visma, a €19bn accounting and payroll software company owned by UK private equity firm Hg, was on track to go public in early 2026 in what would have been London Stock Exchange's biggest listing of the decade. The IPO has now been put on ice.
The reason: a brutal sell-off in software-as-a-service (SaaS) stocks, nicknamed the 'SaaSpocalypse.' Investors suddenly fear that advances in artificial intelligence will let companies replace expensive software subscriptions with cheaper, AI-built alternatives — torching the predictable revenue Wall Street once prized.
Imagine you spent 20 years collecting rare baseball cards, and the market values your collection at $19m. Then a printer is invented that can replicate any card perfectly for $5. Suddenly nobody's sure what your collection is worth — so you're not selling today.
If you're thinking about a career in tech, finance, or even accounting, this story is a live case study in how AI is repricing entire industries in real time. SaaS was the safest, most-loved corner of tech for a decade — recurring revenue, sticky customers, fat margins. The fact that even Visma's IPO can be derailed shows that no business model is automatically safe from disruption, and that's going to shape which companies hire, which jobs exist, and which college majors pay off.
London's stock exchange has been hemorrhaging listings to New York for years; Visma was supposed to be its big comeback. The delay is bad news for the City but a useful preview of a broader question: are we entering a 'different valuation paradigm' where AI permanently compresses what software companies are worth? Watch private credit markets next — Hg's funds are levered up, and if valuations keep falling, the debt used to buy these companies could start mattering more than the equity story.