London Stock Exchange boss Dame Julia Hoggett is facing the toughest chapter of her tenure as delistings accelerate and new listings remain scarce in 2026.
The FTSE 100 is approaching record highs, the FTSE 250 has hit fresh peaks, and even the junior Aim market is six per cent higher over the first week of August.
But beneath those headline figures, more than 30 companies have already left or are poised to leave London’s main market so far this year alone.
Investment giant Schroders has been bought by its larger US rival Nuveen, while insurance firm Beazley is heading to Switzerland and FTSE mainstay Intertek was snapped up by Swedish buyout giant EQT in June.
The wave of foreign takeovers has prompted warnings from City grandees that London’s bourse is “on life support”, being “gutted”, and serving as “fertile ground for bargain hunters.”
An increasingly vocal minority has also directed criticism at Hoggett personally, including Octopus founder Greg Jackson, who suggested the exchange lacks the “hustle” the situation demands.
In her first major set-piece interview in over six months, Hoggett pushed back firmly against what she called attempts “to fit a set of facts into a narrative” of managed decline.
“We are third in the world at creating companies, third in the world at scaling companies,” she told City AM, adding that London holds “the second, third, or fourth largest volume of institutional capital in the world, depending on how you count it.”
The IPO drought has now stretched into its fifth year, with just one capital-raising listing of note so far in 2026, that of Uzbekistan’s national investment fund, dual-listed with Tashkent.
Key candidates including Waterstones, Visma, and payments firm Sumup are said to have pushed their London debuts back into 2027, though Hoggett insists the exchange has “the biggest pipeline we’ve had in 20 years.”
“I can tell you that we have the highest number of companies by the greatest value in our pipeline preparing to execute than has been the case since I’ve been here,” she said, adding plainly: “When they choose to come? That’s their choice.”
Hoggett oversaw what was widely regarded as the largest listing rules overhaul of a generation, carried out alongside the Financial Conduct Authority, drawing broad praise across the industry.
The LSE has also launched a private securities market under the FCA’s PISCES regime, allowing companies to trade shares in pre-determined windows, with autonomous driving firm Wayve and fintech Moneybox both completing transactions on the platform in the past two months.
Beyond structural reforms, Hoggett identifies stamp duty as a central drag on the market, arguing the 0.5 per cent levy on London-listed shares penalises domestic investors who face no equivalent charge when buying shares in companies like Tesla, Nvidia, or Apple.
“We have structurally, over the course of the last 25 years, changed the nature of our capital from risk capital to defensive capital, and removed almost all of the incentives to invest in the UK,” she said.
She called for greater transparency over how pension funds deploy capital, arguing many pensioners would be “shocked” to discover how little of their savings is invested in the domestic economy.
“We need to stop throwing shade at ourselves as a nation and then being surprised if it’s a bit chilly and a bit dark and a bit damp,” she said, insisting that “most countries in the world want exactly what we’ve got.”
Days after the interview, Glencore announced plans for a secondary listing in Sydney, citing years of stubbornly low valuations despite strong trading results, underlining the scale of the challenge ahead.
Despite it all, Hoggett remains resolute in her conviction that London’s capital markets are capable of a genuine recovery under her watch.
“I am an optimist,” she said. “But I don’t think it’s false optimism.”