US Edition
Indivior, the British drug maker, is to ditch its primary listing on the London Stock Exchange for New York in the latest blow to the Square Mile.
The company, which makes treatments for opioid addiction and schizophrenia, said it could move its primary listing to the US as soon as this summer and is consulting shareholders over the switch.
Shares in Indivior surged by as much as 22pc on the announcement, the highest since late November.
The FTSE 250 company said it was proposing the move as there was more opportunity for its treatments in the US and almost half of its shares were already held by investors based there.
Indivior said: “The board is aware that this is an important topic for shareholders and is mindful that a resolution to move forward requires the support of 75pc of shareholders present and voting.”
It said it was planning to maintain a secondary listing in London if the US move goes ahead.
It is the latest setback to the City just a week after Tui shareholders backed a proposal to move the travel giant’s listing from London to Frankfurt.
Companies including Flutter Entertainment, the betting giant; building materials company CRH; and Smurfit Kappa, the packaging maker, have all in recent months either said they are considering a secondary listing outside of London or a complete exit of the market.
Ministers are currently attempting to push through new reforms to make London a better place for companies to be listed, although they have yet to come into law.
The news that Indivior is plotting a switch comes after its former chief executive, Shaun Thaxter, pleaded guilty in 2020 to a US charge related to the marketing of Suboxone, an opioid addiction treatment.
Prosecutors alleged Indivior deceived the healthcare benefit programme and doctors into believing Suboxone, which contains an opioid component, was safer and less likely to be abused than similar drugs. Thaxter was subsequently jailed for six months.
A year later, Indivior was hit by an investor revolt in London over a planned “good leaver” bonus for Thaxter, who was in jail at the time. However, the majority of shareholders voted in favour of the £900,000 payout.
Last year, Indivior reached a separate $385m settlement with wholesalers over its marketing of Suboxone.
In recent years, there has been a boom in demand for opioid treatments in the US, with a 61pc increase in the number of units of its Sublocade drug in 2023.
The opioid crisis has been racking the US for years, killing more than 645,000 people between 1999 and 2021, figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show.
Around four-fifths of Indivior’s revenue comes from the US.
The business was spun out of Reckitt Benckiser, the consumer goods giant which makes Cillit Bang and Vanish, in 2014. It first signalled it might look at a listing in the US in 2022, suggesting it would likely be “beneficial to the group’s profile and visibility”.