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The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published a discussion paper on primary capital markets in the UK and how they can most effectively meet the needs of issuers and investors.
One focus of the paper is potential barriers to the provision of capital for growth, especially for early-stage science and technology companies. The FCA said it “would be useful” to explore the extent to which current market structures and regulation reinforce a short-term focus in issuers and investors, thereby hindering the provision of “patient capital”.
The FCA said that discussions with “pre-IPO” companies indicated a need for technical changes to be made to listing rules, but also “raised the question of whether a more fundamental reassessment might be valuable, focusing particularly on ways in which different forms of primary market structure and regulation might better support scale-up and patient capital, which are particularly crucial for early-stage science and technology companies”.
It cited concerns that the UK’s primary equity markets were proving less effective at providing a means for companies to raise capital for further growth and development.
The regulator said there have been significant changes in secondary capital markets, such as a shift towards algorithmic trading strategies and the separation of primary from secondary markets. These changes were seen by some as having eroded the effectiveness of the primary markets and having led to a focus on short-term trading rather than long-term investment considerations, the FCA said.
Market regulation is seen by some as contributing to such a short-term focus, with “trends in market structure and market regulation […] seen by some to be mutually reinforcing”, it added.