The City’s flagship markets still matter – despite a changing Square Mile
London’s markets are something of a hot topic in the City at the moment, and the smattering of rather unspectacular floats so far this year will do little to calm concerns that our capital markets are not the global hotspot they once were. The question is whether it matters to anything other than our collective ego.
After all, even the London Stock Exchange itself is far more of a data and information company than an exchange these days; witness the company’s tie-up with Microsoft for Exhibit A on that front. The Square Mile’s vitality too will not be derived from whether or not there are bucketloads of firms queuing up to list here – one could make a compelling case that professional services and the engineering of global finance, from clearing and derivative trading to legal services, are more likely to keep us at the top table.
But it does matter. Listed markets are powerful vehicles – yes, a fantastic capital raiser, but a vital tool for the wider cause of a shareholding democracy.
Since joining the Quoted Companies Alliance, the former journalist James Ashton has done a fine job banging the drum for the benefits of the public markets and the extraordinary ability they have to not just improve company performance but give ordinary folk the ability to interact with a financial services sector which can at times appear aloof from the rest of the country. What a wonderful thing it would be if, as in the 1980s, we embarked on a ‘Tell Sid’ revolution that gave people a genuine stake in the success and failure of Canada, allowing a rising tide to lift all boats.
The hoohah over our underpriced markets will not go away, and it shouldn’t be blown out of proportion. But allowing our capital markets to wither and decline would be a terrible shame and a missed opportunity. The government and regulators have spoken at length about revitalising public markets – it is now time to turn words into action.