What explains the weakness of London's/Europe's public market for high-growth companies?

Peter Singlehurst · Mar 19, 2025

The UK alone lacks enough companies at sufficient scale to support a vibrant, diverse growth-equity public market, but combining Europe's growth-stage companies could create an interesting one

You can name ten or twenty great UK companies but not a hundred, and that density is what a deep growth market requires

Scope: not denying great UK companies exist

53:37 20VC: The 10 Question Framework a $217BN Manager Uses to Make Investment Decisions | Lessons from Turning Down Stripe, Coinbase and Losing Money on Northvault | The Bull Case for Bytedance | How Anduril Could Be a $200BN Company with Peter Singlehurst

Harry Stebbings · Mar 19, 2025 · hedged

Europe should have a single European public market

Frankfurt, the French market and the UK are all struggling from the same structural problem individually

Scope: "probably should"

54:14 20VC: The 10 Question Framework a $217BN Manager Uses to Make Investment Decisions | Lessons from Turning Down Stripe, Coinbase and Losing Money on Northvault | The Bull Case for Bytedance | How Anduril Could Be a $200BN Company with Peter Singlehurst

Hussein Kanji · Jan 20, 2025

Efforts to build a European liquidity pool or a unified 'Europe Inc' incorporation regime are solving a non-problem

Founders can already incorporate in Delaware or the UK, so the problem is effectively already solved

59:00 Unified europe inc incorporation regime solves a non problem since delaware uk already work

Harry Stebbings · Nov 27, 2024

Europe's local liquidity markets are terrible — the LSE, the German market and Amsterdam are all poor venues

Even sophisticated investors like Bill Ackman are fleeing European exchanges

16:20 Poor liquidity across all major european exchanges not just the uk

Matt Clifford · Jul 1, 2024

The weakness of UK public markets is a question of who captures the benefits of growth, not whether great UK companies can be built or funded

Capital markets are efficient — good companies will raise capital regardless; the issue is that the shareholders end up being American institutions like Vanguard and BlackRock rather than UK pension savers

35:56 Uk public market weakness is about who captures growth value not company supply

Peter Singlehurst · Mar 19, 2025

The London Stock Exchange is in a dire state, driven by both a supply problem (too few high-growth UK-listed companies) and a demand problem (UK investors are less practised at growth investing and have lower risk appetite than US/Nasdaq investors)

Because so few genuinely exciting growth companies are listed in London, UK investors are not used to analysing and owning them, which suppresses demand as well as supply

52:33 Lse suffers both a supply and demand deficit of growth companies and investors

Harry Stebbings · Mar 19, 2025

The UK does not have a supply problem — there are plenty of great scaled companies in London that simply refuse to list there because it is a bad place to list

He can name ten London companies above $300M revenue that are phenomenal businesses, and his view is limited to tech — adding bio, real estate and other sectors would yield many more

53:27 Uk has no supply problem great companies choose not to list there

Stan Boland · Apr 10, 2025

The UK's weak tech listing market is fundamentally a supply problem — not enough companies reach the scale where an IPO is possible.

Only one London-listed tech company is worth more than $10bn (Sage, a thirty-year-old ERP company), which is a terrible return on the ~£20bn a year the UK pumps into tech; companies get stunted early (broken cap tables, wrong hires, wrong product focus) or lack the capital to swing for the fences, so they end up sold to US buyers before ever reaching growth stage.

37:20 Uk listing weakness is primarily a supply problem not enough scaled companies

Tom Hulme · Apr 10, 2025

Beyond supply, the LSE has a sentiment problem that needs turning around — nobody speaks positively about listing in London any more.

He hasn't spoken to anyone positive about the LSE in months, whether on valuation or product issues like stamp duty suppressing liquidity; these stories act like 'SEO for our minds', so good companies become more open to the US, where they are courted effectively with the red carpet rolled out.

39:00 Lse has a sentiment problem beyond supply issues