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The Luxembourg Stock Exchange logo is seen during its 90th anniversary event in May 2018. Thalassa Holdings, based in the British Virgin Islands, said it will seek a listing for a new subsidiary on the bourse. Photo credit: Matic Zorman 

The standalone unit will be used to shop for deals in Europe after the UK leaves the EU, the company said in a regulatory news announcement.

Thalassa is registered in the British Virgin Islands and currently listed on the London Stock Exchange’s AIM sub-market for smaller firms.

In its announcement on 9 October (PDF), Thalassa stated:

“The board of Thalassa (the ‘Board’) is pleased to announce that the Company is in the process of incorporating a new wholly owned subsidiary in Luxembourg, with the intention of obtaining a listing on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange. The new company will initially be a cash shell considering a number of potential transactions in Europe, which will benefit from a listing to raise any additional funds required and  provides the Company with flexibility post-Brexit. The Board consider Luxembourg, lying within the EU, to be an attractive location both geographically and for the transactions under consideration.”

The use of “cash shells” (called a special purpose acquisition company in the US) are commonly used in the UK for reverse takeovers, Duncan Soukup, executive chairman of Thalassa Holdings, told Delano on Thursday.

Soukup said the Luxembourg structure will “likely” be used for a single transaction, but he “can’t comment” on whether or not Thalassa had a specific company in mind, nor on when any deal would take place.

“We are constantly looking for acquisitions. We recently sold, quite successfully, our oil and gas seismic business and we’re sitting on quite a lot of cash and we’re looking for our next transaction,” he stated. “We have a number of potential ideas [but] it’s not one specifically.”

The choice of Luxembourg was quite intentional, he added.

The company currently owns Autonomous Robotics, a UK firm which develops autonomous underwater vehicles, and has a stake in The Local Shopping Reit, a real estate investment fund specialised in UK retail properties.

A spokeswoman for the Luxembourg Stock Exchange told Delano on 11 October that the company had not yet initiated the listing procedure with the bourse.