Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
For UK policymakers who have spent years trying to revive interest in the London stock market, it is easy to look with envy at recent news from across the Atlantic. While New York enjoys a glut of new listings, led by the record-breaking SpaceX IPO, Downing Street officials have been calling in private equity executives to probe them about a lack of deals. But comparison, as they say, is the thief of joy. Keep the focus closer to home, and things are not quite as bad as they seem.
Companies raised $720mn in initial public offerings in London in the first half of 2026, according to data from Dealogic. One group — Uzbekistan’s national investment fund — accounted for the vast majority of the total. Even so, it is an improvement on the past few years. And if Airtel Africa goes ahead with plans to list its mobile money business in London later this year, it will be the UK’s best year for new listings since 2021 even if nobody else follows suit.
These two large deals suggest that London’s historical attractiveness for companies from emerging markets remains intact. It is good to see that groups with no direct ties to the UK still see the appeal. See also the recent FTSE 100 entrant Lion Finance, a Georgian bank that considered switching its listing to the US but decided it benefits from the UK’s more expert investor base.
Were observers hoping for more? Sure. But the biggest disappointment of the first half — €19bn software group Visma postponing its listing — was hardly because of London-specific problems, but rather because of the global sell-off in software-as-a-service companies. It would hardly have had an easier time in the US — the S&P 500 software and services index is down 18 per cent year to date.
Most of Europe is in a similar state. The $4.5bn raised in the Netherlands in the first half of the year looks good, but that all went to one company — CSG, a defence group that fitted the zeitgeist in exactly the way Visma did not. France, Italy and the much-heralded Swedish market are all trailing the UK; Germany is only fractionally higher.
It is good to aim higher than European rivals, given London’s status as a major financial centre. The next occupants of Downing Street should continue efforts to boost the UK. There are areas for improvement: one thing the UK lacks, which helps newly listed companies in the US, is a vibrant culture of retail investment. But the problems shouldn’t be exaggerated. The IPO market, more than almost any other, is about confidence: sound too glum, and no amount of policy tweaking will bring deals back.