First, the good news. This is the last time I’m going to harass you (at least via the newsletter) to fill in our latest survey. We’re on the cusp of our target number of responses, so if you’re an entrepreneur, you could be the one to make our day. If you’re part of any other network of founders, sharing it would be incredibly helpful.
Now, the bad news. London has dropped to twenty-third place globally for IPOs. Twenty-third. Behind Oman, Mexico and Croatia. According to Bloomberg, volume this year dropped 69% to $248 million, the weakest haul in more than 35 years. In 2013, UK IPOs accounted for more than half of the European fundraising total – this year it’s just 3%. Ouch!
No wonder the Treasury is reported to be considering giving a stamp duty holiday to new London Stock Exchange (LSE) listings. The measure would exempt investors from the 0.5% tax on buying the shares of newly listed companies in the UK, applying for a period of two to three years after the company’s stock market flotation.
While the current state of public finances might not allow it in November’s budget, the Government should really scrap stamp duty entirely. As we argued in Backing Breakthrough Businesses through our Private Business Commission:
“Stamp Duty Reserve Tax (SDRT) is highly distortive, affecting decisions about share turnover, suppressing share prices, and biasing investors against UK-listed equities at a moment when we need the exact opposite – something that also biases entrepreneurs against listing in, or indeed setting up in the UK. It disproportionately punishes marginal investments too. Whereas Corporation Tax taxes the return on investments and relieves the cost of investing through allowances, SDRT has no such allowances and effectively taxes both the investment itself and the return on it, even when those returns are negative.”
It’s not just a matter of tax, though. The exchange remains more highly regulated than many of its competitors. Victor Riparbelli, founder of UK-based $2 billion AI unicorn Synthesia, recently tore into the LSE, describing it as “more like a hospice than a stock exchange,” lamenting the City’s preference for rent-seeking over innovation. Riparbelli isn’t threatening to leave, but he is articulating what many founders quietly think but often won’t say – at least, not publicly.
To be fair, there are pockets of understanding in the current Government (as there were in the previous one) about the scope of the challenge. As the Science Minister Lord Vallance said only yesterday:
“We are streamlining listing and prospectus rules, removing outdated restrictions on follow-on capital, and have launched PISCES – a new stock-exchange model to help private companies scale and provide a stepping-stone to public markets”...“We are pushing better regulation, including through the work of the Regulatory Innovation Office which has cleared away barriers in four technology areas and will expand its work over the next year.”
The stakes couldn’t be higher. Britain excels at creating startups – we raised over £8 billion in the first half of 2025, more than France and Germany combined. But we’re losing companies at the scale-up stage. If we want to remain a globally significant economy of the future, we need to fix that – pronto.
Now, I’m afraid, the ugly – and it’s connected.
In the same week London slumped in the IPO rankings, a debate erupted about the economic contribution immigrants make to the UK. On Sunday, Hannah Prevett, Associate Business Editor of The Sunday Times, made the business case for immigration and shared her personal story on LinkedIn, which is worth reading if you missed it.
But here’s why it matters for our capital markets crisis: you can’t fix the IPO drought without securing the fundamental building blocks of growth, which include, among other things, having the talent pipeline to create IPO-ready companies in the first place.
According to The Economist, Synthesia only exists in London because Victor Riparbelli wanted to move to California but the US denied him a visa. Our latest Job Creators data makes this concrete. Hannah shared the numbers in her column:
“Analysis of Britain’s fastest-growing companies from The Entrepreneurs Network in 2024 showed that 39% have at least one foreign-born founder or co-founder. That is far out of proportion to the roughly 14.5% of the general population born overseas, and early indications suggest the figure will be higher still for 2025.”
Somehow it looks like I managed to end on a positive note. Let’s double down on this. And if you need another dose of optimism, watch Jensen Huang talk up Britain in an interview with Faisal Islam.
Blick 101
Our Corporate Partner Blick Rothenberg is hosting a breakfast roundtable with the esteemed Centre for the Analysis of Taxation on how our tax system should evolve to meet the needs of a modern, competitive economy. Our Patron, Chris Hulatt, co-founder of Octopus Group, will be on the panel. It would be great to see you there. Find out more here.
Connect 10
Our friends at Enterprise Nation reached out following the launch of Supply Connect, a free national programme supported by JPMorgan Chase. It provides practical support for small and micro businesses to get them fit to supply and win public sector contracts.
I hope it’s useful. Relatedly, on the back of a chat with Number 10, I’m collating a list of all the useful, free resources that are out there which support entrepreneurs. I know not all the best things in life are free, but it’s a good place to start. Drop me a message if you have anything to recommend.