London slipped behind Singapore, Mexico, and Oman as an IPO destination, ratcheting up pressure on the Starmer government to fix the UK’s capital markets. The LSE fell out of the top 20 markets for new listings, according to a Bloomberg analysis of money raised. Meanwhile, its existing companies are steadily eyeing the exits: AstraZeneca, which has been in a standoff with the British government’s health service over drug pricing, said Monday it would add trading of its shares on the New York Stock Exchange, a move that could presage a rumored full-scale relisting.
“We’ve gone through a process over the last couple of years, making a lot of changes — some very dramatic changes — so that now London is a far more flexible regime for listing,” LSE Group CEO David Schwimmer said at a conference last week in Washington. They include a fast-track inclusion into stock indexes and easier ability to use stock as a currency in M&A deals. (Schwimmer noted that a UK public company was able to beat out a private-equity firm in a recent takeover battle, thanks to the rule change.) Efforts to nudge UK pension funds to invest more in domestic stocks haven’t borne much fruit.
But as Schwimmer told Semafor’s Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson at Davos earlier this year, “the performance of companies that have gone to the US, it’s gruesome.” (One of those companies, paper giant Smurfit Westrock, doesn’t disagree.)