Peel Hunt boss renews calls for tax cuts to rescue ailing public markets
The boss of City broker Peel Hunt has called for a raft of fresh tax cuts for London’s stock market to help stem the flood of delistings and end the dearth of flotations.
CEO Steven Fine called for stamp duty on share trades to be abolished in a bid to help “shift this doomloop of negativity that seems to pervade the country.”
Hunt also called for the restoration of dividends tax credits for pension funds investing in UK equities, which were abolished in 1997, as well as for entrepreneurs relief on capital gains tax for business owners who sell shares via an IPO.
Speaking to CityAM, Fine said: “There are a lot of levers at our disposal that we could pull that either wouldn’t cost the exchequer a bean or could significantly move the dial on the mindset of people you want to commit to growth in the UK.
“We’ve got to do something to help it happen, and we’ve got these very deep and large pools of capital that we could not force, but nudge a bit more into domestic productive assets.”
London exodus
The calls come after the London Stock Exchange suffered another torrid week of company exits, led by £11bn fintech giant Wise which unveiled plans to move its primary listing to New York.
On Monday, semiconductor firm Alphawave reached a £1.8bn deal to be acquired by American chipmaker Qualcomm, while testing equipment specialist Spectris unveiled a £3.7bn takeover offer from US private equity company Advent.
Despite the exodus Fine insisted that there were fast-growing British businesses who remained interested in opting for a London IPO over New York under the right circumstances.
“We’re definitely having more conservations about IPOs than we have done for some time,” he said.
“We don’t have many on the books [at the moment] but we have some.
“There are quite high-profile unicorn companies in the UK that are quite patriotic. They’d rather be a big fish in a smaller pond here than hardly known over there.”
Peel Hunt hosts investors and companies this week at its annual FTSE 250 conference, with speakers including City minister Emma Reynolds and Tory leader Kemi Badenoch.