NEW YORK, July 4 (Reuters) – China-founded online retailer Shein is working with at least three investment banks on a possible US IPO and has been in talks with the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, people familiar with the thing said.
Goldman Sachs (GS.N), Morgan Stanley (MS.N) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM.N) are among the banks helping Shein prepare for the IPO, according to six sources.
The timing of an IPO is uncertain and the fashion retailer, which is under scrutiny by US lawmakers for its labor practices, could decide not to proceed in the near future, one of the sources said.
Most recently valued at over $60 billion, Shein could become the most valuable China-founded company to go public in the United States since ride-hailing giant Didi Global (92Sy.MU) debuted in 2021 with a valuation of $68 billion. Didi was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) a year later amid Beijing’s crackdown on Chinese tech giants over antitrust and data security regulations.
Shein has not yet decided on the location for its IPO, and Nasdaq and NYSE have both been in contact with the company to try and convince it to choose their own exchange, two of the sources said.
Shein officials in Singapore, where the company is headquartered, declined to comment on any IPO plans or discussions with the investment banks and exchanges. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Nasdaq and NYSE declined to comment, while JPMorgan did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Last week, Reuters reported that Shein had confidentially filed its IPO filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. After the story was published, Shein said it “denies these rumors,” without elaborating. Three people familiar with the matter subsequently told Reuters that no IPO filing has been filed with the SEC.
Shein has been working on drafts of the IPO filing, two sources said.
Launched in China in 2012, Shein has eyed a US IPO for at least three years, though it has been put off by headwinds, including tensions between Beijing and Washington, US scrutiny of Chinese accounting practices and periods of market volatility caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. 19 pandemic and the Russian war in Ukraine, Reuters previously reported.
Shein’s IPO has been opposed by a bipartisan group of two dozen U.S. representatives who have called for an independent audit to verify that the company does not use Uyghur forced labor before it can list shares.
Shein has said it adheres to ethical sourcing standards and has denied allegations that it ships from China’s Xinjiang region, where materials such as cotton are often the product of forced labor by the Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority. For this reason, the United States prohibits exports from Xinjiang.
US lawmakers are also trying to limit the “de minimis” tariff exemption commonly used by e-commerce retailers like Shein to ship orders from China to the United States.
Shein was valued at more than $60 billion in a $2 billion private fundraising round in March. General Atlantic, Mubadala, Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital China were among the investors, Reuters reported at the time.
Company founder Chris Xu moved Shein’s headquarters to Singapore from Nanjing, the capital of China’s eastern Jiangsu province, more than a year ago, a move that helps Shein evade China’s strict new rules on foreign listings.
Additional reporting by Kane Wu and Julie Zhu in Hong Kong, editing by Greg Roumeliotis in New York