Howden Group, the London-based insurance broker that’s chasing an initial public offering by 2030, is in talks to raise several billion pounds in new private capital as it seeks to maintain its breakneck expansion.

The group, which is already backed by Hg, General Atlantic and Canada’s La Caisse, and which has operations in Bermuda, is working with bankers at Morgan Stanley on the project that will also bring in new external shareholders, people with knowledge of the process said.

The slated capital raise, likely to be one of the largest ever undertaken by a private UK business, is a key pillar of founder and chief executive officer David Howden’s long-term plan. That strategy, set out by the company in a document shared with investors, involves taking the company public and achieving a £50 billion ($67.4 billion) valuation.

The funds raised with the help of Morgan Stanley will be used to slash the substantial debt pile accumulated by the group after an acquisition spree that’s seen it swallow about 250 companies over the past five years. They would also help fuel the company’s next leg of growth, investing in the business, luring new talent and enabling existing employees to trade shares.

“We bought companies in lots of countries, we’ve got lots of different systems in place,” Mr Howden said in an interview, while declining to comment on the capital raise. Now the challenge is “how do we make sure actually that we pull all that together, not only a way that’s controlled, but that’s also efficient.”

A representative for Morgan Stanley declined to comment.

The group was last valued at £10 billion following an internal share sale in 2024 but the impending capital injection would help it on its way to a market capitalisation within fighting distance of its largest publicly traded rivals. Achieving its targeted valuation would also propel the firm’s eponymous founder, who retains a minority stake, into the ranks of the UK’s billionaires, the people said.

Founded in the 1990s by David Howden, himself a descendant of a British insurance-broking dynasty, the firm now employs more than 24,000 staff in offices from Tokyo to Miami. Its core business involves placing complex risks with specialty insurers and reinsurers, writing cover and even advising insurance groups on capital and deals.

Mr Howden has assembled a team of key lieutenants as he plots the group’s path to the top tier of insurance broking, including David Shalders, a former operations chief of the London Stock Exchange Group Plc and Susan Panuccio, who until recently oversaw finances at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. The latter was introduced through a common friend, former editor of UK newspaper The Sun, Rebekah Brooks.

While talks for the capital raise are progressing, a series of questions linger over the business and the sustainability of its rapid expansion.

At the end of March, Howden’s most senior debt pile was equivalent to 5.1 times earnings. The figure is at the “top end” of the company’s four to five times target, Mr Howden said. He added that his firm will be aiming for a leverage ratio of three to four times earnings as it works towards an IPO.

The broker “is certainly very highly leveraged”, said Terence Smiyan, analyst at S&P Global Ratings. “Although this is not uncommon with private equity-backed brokers and other relatively resilient service companies, where aggressive debt-funded M&A fuels high growth and consolidation in fragmented markets.”

Mr Smiyan pointed to the group’s solid track record for consolidating companies it buys and underlying organic growth that have enabled it to service higher debt levels. But the firm’s recent push into the US, which he described as “aggressive”, is leading to “higher than usual exceptional costs as well as some dis-synergies, reducing ratings headroom”.

Howden’s own path to expansion in the crucial US market has challenged relationships with former partners against which it now competes.

Mr Howden originally planned to crack that market through a $10 billion acquisition of rival Risk Strategies but talks fell apart.

Instead, Howden pivoted to a “team lift” strategy, which has seen it grow its US headcount by more than 1,000 staff since August. While poaching dozens of brokers from rivals isn’t uncommon in the industry, the scale and speed at which Howden is executing its strategy is widely seen as unprecedented.

Howden, which has set aside tens of millions in legal provisions, has been slapped with total restraining orders as a result. In February Howden was barred from soliciting employees and clients of Marsh & McLennan Cos, the world’s largest insurance broker.

The court order followed a team raid that included the poaching Marsh executive Mike Parrish, now CEO of Howden US. The push into US retail means it now also competes with some of its clients, retail brokers who would normally send business to Howden’s teams that place risks in the wholesale market.

“Our specialty business is growing by 10 per cent organically this year. Even with all that loss,” Howden said. “It was a rounding error to us — irrelevant, don’t care about it all.”

Howden plans to maintain a large share of employee ownership as a key incentive for staff. As such, that means an IPO would likely involve a relatively small free float. David Howden, 62, plans to stay invested in the company, and its CEO, beyond the IPO.

And while the company has benefited from the long-running consolidation in the industry, Howden remains adamant he won’t join other competitors who abandoned plans for an IPO and opted to sell instead.

“We built Howden with the goal that it is owned by the people that worked in it, and would never, ever be sold.”