Labour’s penchant for high taxes has sent investors fleeing Britain. London’s once-proud IPO market has taken a battering, slipping to 20th place among global listing venues this year. Oman, Malaysia, and even Luxembourg have pulled in more from IPOs than the the UK. A few years ago London routinely ranked in the top five. Though not a single UK IPO has cracked the global top 100 this year….
Meanwhile, the UK’s seen a staggering 71% surge in mergers and acquisitions as business owners race to sell up, and October saw investors offloading a whopping net £2.7 billion from equity funds—the largest outflow ever recorded—draining every category of fund in the process. Thanks to the Reeves Budget, “there’s a malaise in the UK — the state of capital markets is negative” as Gatemore Capital Management’s Liad Meidar says. If the current trend of declining listings continues the LSE will be irrelevant by the end of the decade…
Speaking at his speech on how to achieve “progressive capitalism” Wes Streeting fired a dig and Andy Burnham:
“Bond markets are not bond villains and fiscal rules matter.”