LSE boss calls for long-term campaign to get Brits investing again
The chief of the London Stock Exchange (LSE) has called for a new program to encourage investment in the UK’s beleaguered bourse amid fears the stock market is headed for long-term decline.
Dame Julia Hoggett suggested a ‘Tell Sid’ style campaign, which was a successful advertising initiative launched in 1986 to encourage the public to buy shares in British Gas after its privatization.
Hoggett said that “we have still not seen the real turning point in terms of flows of risk capital within and into the UK”, despite attempt to reform the market by the Government and by regulators.
“A lot of investors are more fearful of investing in the real economy than investing in cryptocurrency… now is the time for a long-term public campaign that would demystify investing,” she said at a conference hosted on Friday by the Capital Markets Industry Taskforce.
The exchange has seen a number of high-profile exits this year, with fintech Wise, FTSE100 giant DS Smith and Darktrace all leaving.
Hoggett’s suggestion of a ‘Tell Sid’ campaign comes amid mounting fear that the LSE is heading for a ‘doom-loop’, with depressed valuations leading to a boom in US companies snapping up cheap UK firms.
Just under a quarter of Brits invest in the stock market, versus around 60 per cent in the US.
Sarah Pritchard, the deputy chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority, said at the same conference: “If we have more companies listing then some of them will fail and that should be OK and the first reaction shouldn’t be, ‘There must be something wrong with the regulation.’”
Pritchard reportedly suggested that proposals to help consumers to manage their finances were on the way.