The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) has said that last year was “poor” for company listings, but it is encouraged by the pipeline for this year.
London has struggled to attract new companies over the last year, and several businesses that are listed in the capital have abandoned or downgraded their listing.
These include travel giant Tui, which is ditching its London listing in favour of Frankfurt, Paddy Power owner Flutter, which will likely shift its main listing to New York, and medical company Indivior, which could do the same.
“In our equities business, we continued to work with the industry, regulators and Government on market reform,” LSEG said on Thursday.
“2023 was a poor year globally for IPOs.”
The company said that its equities division had seen an 8.5% drop in revenue to £227 million in 2023.
But chief executive David Schwimmer said there are some green shoots. Earlier this week it was reported that Chinese fast fashion giant Shein is eyeing a potential initial public offering (IPO) in the UK.
“We are also seeing an encouraging IPO pipeline for the London Stock Exchange,” he said.
The group reported that pre-tax profit fell 3.7% to £1.2 billion on total income of £8.4 billion, up 8.2%.
Mr Schwimmer said: “2023 was another strong year for LSEG.
“We continued our track record of broad-based growth, despite an uncertain environment, and delivered on all the targets we set at the time of the Refinitiv acquisition.
“We also significantly improved our products and services, further strengthened our leadership team and made great progress on creating a high-performance culture throughout the organisation.”
Shares had dropped 0.8% on Thursday morning.