London must ‘market its successes better’ to avoid another Wise
Britain must emulate the success of Nasdaq and get better at trumpeting its business success stories if it wants to attract more companies to list in London, one of the UK’s top fintech venture capital investors has said.
Speaking to CityAM the day that payments darling Wise revealed plans to ditch its primary listing for New York, Anthemis founder Amy Nauiokas said the London Stock Exchange (LSE) should try emulate the support promotion the US’s tech-heavy bourse gives its new constituents.
“It’s not brain surgery,” said Nauiokas, whose firm has been an early-stage backer of fintech success stories like Etoro, Zoopla and Tide. “They [the LSE] need to promise UK entrepreneurs that there’s a path here, and that they’ll support them, build an ecosystem around them, and give the perks that the Nasdaq gives them.”
London capital markets have been locked in a multi-year struggle to attract and retain some of its brightest companies. Since the start of 2024 alone, cherished listed firms like Darktrace, TUI and most DS Smith have all delisted or been taken private from the capital’s stock market. And promising UK-headquartered scale-ups like Arm have opted to list in New York over London, with other darlings like Revolut and Klarna looking likely to follow suit.
Departed firms have tended to cite London’s stubbornly low valuations and lower liquidity relative to its US rivals, but Nauiokas argued that the lengths to which New York goes to promote and celebrate its new additions was just as important a factor.
Commenting on the Nasdaq’s custom of advertising its fresh listings in New York’s Time Square, she said: “Half the reason why people go there is so they get to see their their picture on 45th Street.”
Her comments ring true with the rationale for ditching London given by Wise, which floated in the UK to great fanfare in 2021. Billionaire cofounder Kristo Kaarmannder said a US listing would help raise Wise’s profile in the country as it joins the many London-based fintech giants looking to expand their services in the world’s largest market.
“We believe the addition of a primary US listing would help us accelerate our mission and bring substantial strategic and capital market benefits to Wise and our owners,” he said in the firm’s statement announcing its planned departure.
Nauiokas, whose firm invests in start-ups in both the US and UK with offices in both New York and London, said she understood the Wise board’s decision, adding that were she a secondary capital and pre-IPO dealmaker, she “would probably say the best option right now was either a dual listing or a US-based IPO”.
All the opportunity is in London
But despite the downbeat rhetoric surrounding the London Stock Exchange, she added that the ongoing political turmoil in America was something on which London – and Europe as a whole – should be poised to capitalise.
“It strikes me that all the opportunity is here [in London],” she said.
“This is a moment. A moment for investors to find great entrepreneurs and make money, but also a moment for regulatory navel gazing – government navel gazing – private partnership navel gazing – to say we could do something here. Let’s do something.”
Family offices and institutional money are increasingly looking to reduce the weighting of US assets in their portfolio in response to the capricious and unpredictable policy directives from the White House, Nauiokas said. Many ultra-rich families have re-weighted their portfolios from an “80/20 North America to Europe to now 50/50”.
“I’m super excited about the UK specifically. But it needs to take this moment of market geopolitical dislocation,” she said, adding: “The LSE can do a much better job of reshaping its proposition, and the government needs to get rid of stamp duty on shares.”