James Wootton, a business partner of Linklaters of each summer, sits with his equity market team in early July to determine the Rota of the holidays on the lull. This year, the partners of the law firm whose head office had to take their laptops to the beach because no silent period has been published.
“All the evidence … The momentum seems to return to the European lists,” explains Wootton. “It is a very important of 12 to 18 months now … The markets seem to be ready and receptive.”
Wootton’s comments are taken up by peers and head hunters across London who, after a shortage of work works in the capital in the last three years, finally seek partners with the experience of stock markets (ECM) again while law firms and consultants see an increase in public mergers and acquisitions, and are preparing for an initial audience that has any need.
Chris Clark, director of the legal recruiter based in London, Device Search, said that he was helping to build an ECM team for an American law firm in preparation for the market takeoff, and has launched research in other companies that seek to do something similar.
Another legal head hunter said it recently placed an ECM partner in an American company after a number of years of calm in practice.
We are carrying out research “in preparation for this market to take off, which many companies think of happening,” said Clark.
New announcements on London public procurement went from a peak of 125 in 2021 to 17 last year, according to data from London Stock Exchange Group, faced with geopolitical uncertainty and after the majority of companies that registered in 2021 have collapsed. Until now, there have been 10 lists on AIM and the main market in 2025.
This is the second in a series of four articles examining how companies in different sectors that serve the Mile Carré must adapt to these lists to survive.
Other scholarships – in particular those of Europe – have also fought with an introductory fellowship on the stock market, but the United Kingdom is also confronted with some of the largest companies in the FTSE being deprived, or to decide to change their main list of London in New York, including Wise, one of the stars of the brightest technology in the United Kingdom.
The drought in the introduction of London: an FT series
First part: Why the city’s bankers rotate
Second part: Law and accounting firms are preparing for a rebound
Third part: Prs Fuise
Fourth part: fund managers call for the change in British policy to feed the following inscriptions
Now, a combination of repressed demand, long periods of “maintenance” in investment capital portfolios for which the IPO can be an outing, and the advice requested by companies looking to list give advisers to optimism, said Mark Austin, a business partner of the law firm Latham & Watkins.
“We are at a inflection point at the moment and there is no reason why the United Kingdom does not take more than its fair share of the activity of the incoming capital markets,” said Austin, which was charged by the government in 2021 for helping to reform and invigorate public markets of the United Kingdom.
For many lawyers and consultants, a turning point could not arrive early enough.
“We expected it to be a very great year for the IPO, but we had the announcements of the” Liberation Day “and the pricing announcements, which noted that many of these companies postponed the target date of their agreement for later this year,” said Vhernie Manickavasagar, a partner and an IPC IPC UK, Trump.
“However, we are still working on all these offers, which occupies us,” she added.
Manickavasagar’s experience is reproduced by Simon Nicholls, a co-responsible for the company in Slaughter and May, who said that the work of the company recovered around 50% in the spring.
“The year started well, a little average, then the increase in post-American post-American mergers and acquisitions did not occur,” said Nicholls. “Now we have had one of the busiest summers for years … with really interesting and good size companies that are looking to come to the market [further out]. “”
Simon Olsen, a partner of the Deloitte market capital market group, said the activity level meant that he had recently recruited after a certain number of years of retraction of hiring.
When the real work of Introduction on the Stock Exchange began to vacillate, he added, his team remained occupied with a dismantling activity.
This type of work needs many of the same skills to prepare the newly separate entity for the list as well as potential mergers and acquisitions. For example, the Manickavasagar team and the British and South African companies in Deloitte have advised the Anglo American Miner for its $ 11 billion, amplats, which made its secondary list in London this summer this summer, Valterra.
A demand for the demand for the London capital markets will be whether local fintechs, such as Monzo, remain on site or, as rival, decide to list it in New York – a privileged place for technological companies. Another successful IPO in the form of a fast Shein fashion platform seems more and more likely to be in London. Revolut also seems to promote New York in London.
Companies may also feel more favorable in the United Kingdom in the face of a lighter regulatory program of the government, which has seen agencies such as competition and market authority assume a less interventionist approach. CMA Director General Sarah Cardell said this year that the regulator is examining less world transactions.
However, the obstinate lack of capital market activity in recent years has led to chasing instructions.
A partner in a consultative shop of agreements said that large companies that are generally focusing on stock market Introduction offers of more than 1 billion pounds Sterling had to work on mid-term lists, invoice fees lower than normally and make the advisory space for the average IPO.
“Everything is compressed,” said the partner.
Wootton de Linklaters said he had been careful during time to make sure that his team could execute several scenarios for each client in parallel, for M&A and the IPOs. Linklaters won lists in London in the past year, despite the lack of activity.
The firm advised both Atalaya Mining and Alpha Group on their way from AIM to the London Stock Exchange.
“The multitrack nature of transactions now pushes the best advisers to be able to operate in a holistically and multi -on -the -art manner,” said Wootton.
While companies are preparing for more busy British financial markets, there is a warning attached to the last series of hires that cannot be ignored, according to head hunters.
In the memory given to the London legal recruiter who recently placed an ECM partner in an American law firm, the firm said clearly to them: “The candidate must be able to return to mergers and private acquisitions if the market does not bounce.”
