Adyen Co-Founder Now a Billionaire as European Tech IPO Soars

(Bloomberg) -- The co-founder and chief technology officer of Adyen NV is now a billionaire after shares of the Dutch payments processing firm doubled in its first two hours of trading.

Arnout Schuijff, 50, sold about 62 million euros ($72 million) of stock, according to the company prospectus, in the biggest public offering of a technology company in Europe this year. That values his remaining 6.4 percent stake in the company at more than $1 billion.

His holding exceeds that of co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Pieter van der Does, 49, whose 4.8 percent stake is now valued at $800 million. Schuijff’s brother, Joost, sold about half of his shares in the IPO and owns a stake worth $500 million. Adyen spokesman Hemmo Bosscher declined to comment.

Adyen -- which means “start over again” in Surinamese -- is the second collaboration between van der Does and Arnout Schuijff. The pair helped found Bibit Global Payment Services, which was sold to Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc in 2004 for an undisclosed sum. They founded Adyen two years later. In 2017, the payments firm generated net revenue of 218 million euros, a 38 percent increase from a year earlier, according to the prospectus.

Adyen was up 90 percent at 457 euros at 11:48 a.m. in Amsterdam, valuing the company at 13.5 billion euros.

To contact the reporter on this story: Devon Pendleton in London at dpendleton@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Pierre Paulden at ppaulden@bloomberg.net, Jon Menon, Christian Baumgaertel

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