London Market Eyes Better Days Amid Flurry of Listing Interest

It has been hit by years of depressed activity and is only the sixth-biggest globally now

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LONDON - A flurry of interest among companies in listing on the London Stock Exchange suggests the British stock market's fortunes may be improving after many years of depressed activity.

Several big companies are looking at potential London share listings, including Chinese fast-fashion giant Shein, miner Anglo American Platinum and Hong Kong conglomerate CK Infrastructure Holdings.

An effort by the new Labour government to channel more British pension fund money into local stocks may help. But the market is still much smaller than it was before the 2008 global financial crisis, and a recent pullback by investors from European equities has hit London harder than other European markets.

In some ways, London's stock market challenges are similar to Singapore's, where new listings have dwindled, delistings are rising and liquidity has fallen over the years.

In August 2024, a review group led by the Monetary Authority of Singapore was set up to deliver measures to revive the Singapore Exchange (SGX).

Like the SGX, initial public offerings on the London exchange have dwindled, while several big companies have chosen to switch their main share listings to New York.

An especially bitter blow was London's failure to list one of the most promising British technology companies, chip designer Arm Holdings.

Despite lobbying by government ministers and an offer to relax British listing rules, Arm's Japanese parent company SoftBank Group Corp chose New York for its return to public markets.

In 2022, miner BHP Group also switched its main listing to Sydney, ending a dual arrangement with London that had dated back to the company's creation in a merger 20 years earlier.