The Financial Times' Lex column recently suggested that policymakers who look enviously at New York's glut of new listings should cheer up, because comparison is the thief of joy and things are not quite as bad as they seem.
They are, in fact, exactly as bad as they seem. It's just that we've stopped measuring against anything meaningful.
Grading on a very generous curve
The headline figure is that companies raised roughly $720m through new listings in London in the first half of 2026. Dealogic's number differs slightly from other counts — EY-Parthenon logged seven listings raising £577m, a 215% jump on the same period last year — but the order of magnitude is the point. Seven companies. Half a billion quid. For the primary equity market of a country that still insists on describing itself as a global financial centre.
Global IPO proceeds in the same six months came to $193.6bn across 509 listings, and a single American float raised $86.2bn on its own. London's entire half-year haul is well under one percent of one US deal. The 215% growth rate sounds tremendous right up until you remember what it's growing from: 2025 was the worst first half Dealogic had recorded since it started counting in 1995.
Saved by Tashkent and a mobile wallet
Lex's consolation prize is that Britain compares well with the neighbours — France, Italy and the much-hyped Swedish market all trailing, Germany only fractionally ahead. This is true and completely useless. Nobody ever pitched London as the best place to list in Europe if you discount Frankfurt. The whole proposition was that London competed with New York.
Then there's the composition. Most of that $720m came from one source: Uzbekistan's national investment fund. The recovery of the London Stock Exchange, such as it is, currently rests on the sovereign wealth vehicle of a Central Asian republic. And the hope for the year rests on Airtel Africa listing its mobile money arm in London, a deal that could value the business at around $10bn — which would make it the biggest London debut since Wise in 2021, and would single-handedly turn a dismal year into the best since 2021.
One deal. That's the margin between crisis and recovery.
The problem isn't the shop window
The listings drought is a symptom, not the disease. Companies float where investors will pay for them, and British investors have spent the best part of five years quietly walking out of British equities — UK-focused funds have seen money leave in almost every month since 2021. Pension funds shifted into bonds decades ago and never came back. The FCA can slacken free-float requirements and let founders keep their dual-class shares all it likes; none of that conjures up a domestic buyer base that no longer exists.
Final thoughts
Lex ends with a warning that sounding too glum will stop deals coming back — confidence being, in the City's view, a self-fulfilling prophecy. There's something to that. But there's a difference between talking a market down and declining to talk it up, and Britain has a real talent for mistaking the second for the first. We keep reframing decline as resilience, then wondering why the reframing never works.
A market that needs Uzbekistan to have a decent year doesn't need better PR. It needs someone to ask why the money left.