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Perspectives: The evolution of the London Stock Exchange
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This episode features Dame Julia Hoggett, CEO, London Stock Exchange, in conversation with Jo Miyake, Head of Banking, Asia and Middle East, HSBC. Together they explore how London is evolving its capital markets proposition – from international connectivity with Asia, to building a funding continuum that supports companies from private growth through to public markets.
Watch or listen to find out more.
This episode was recorded on the sidelines of the HSBC Global Investment Summit 2026 in Hong Kong. Find out more https://www.business.hsbc.com/en-gb/campaigns/global-investment-summit
Disclaimer: Views of external guest speakers do not represent those of HSBC.
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Guests
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to HSBC Global Viewpoint, the podcast series that brings together business leaders and industry experts to explore the latest global insights, trends, and opportunities.
00:00:13
Speaker
Make sure you're subscribed to stay up to date with new episodes. Thanks for listening, and now onto to today's show.
00:00:21
Speaker
Hi, I'm Joe Miyake, Head of Banking for Asia and Middle East, and welcome to the Perspectives podcast series. I'm delighted to be here today, joined by Julia Hoggart, who runs the London Stock Exchange. We're here to talk a lot about the Stock Exchange and what's happening in the
Julia Hoggart's Career Journey
00:00:38
Speaker
world. But before we get into that, maybe a little bit on your on your background.
00:00:42
Speaker
um i think what I find interesting about the viewpoint that you have, of course, is from a Stock Exchange's perspective, it's one of the few places decisions are made in the boardrooms, but that quickly shows up in people's pensions, jobs and savings, a critical aspect of the structure.
00:01:01
Speaker
ah But your career has really spanned a lot of things. And I've actually had the pleasure of working with you in almost every one of your capacities. I'm glad you say pleasure. I'm i'm pleased about that. Thank you. So first and foremost, you worked inside a global bank, shaping and structuring deals. That's where we first met. yeah And then you moved to a regulator where you helped to write and enforce the rules of the game.
00:01:25
Speaker
And indeed, we met there as well. Yes. On opposite sides of the table. yeahp And now, if i if I could say it this way, you look after the stadium where the game is being played in financial services. I like that phrase.
00:01:36
Speaker
When you talk about capital markets and the need to change and what London has to do to remain relevant, it's not theory. It's really a lived experience. And I think that's what makes this conversation today so interesting for all of us. So thank you again for being with us.
00:01:53
Speaker
Pleasure. Thank you for having me. So let's jump into
Role of LSE in Global Markets
00:01:56
Speaker
it. um We're here in Hong Kong. When we talk about the London Stock Exchange and London in particular, it's really the bridge between Hong Kong, Asian markets closing and the US opening. It's really also a gateway for Asia to access European capital markets.
00:02:13
Speaker
And when we when we think about this um and what we're seeing in the market, I think it' it's really interesting when you look at some of these statistics and it it brings some challenges that you must be facing. On ah one hand, we've seen the Hong Kong Stock Exchange ah be ranked number one globally in the year 2025, 231% year, which is very substantial.
00:02:35
Speaker
with about $37 billion dollars of IPO proceeds from about 119 deals, a lot underpinned by Stock Connect and the China tech biotech listings that we've been seeing.
00:02:47
Speaker
Meanwhile, the London Stock Exchange being Europe's top a venue for equity capital raised about 25 billion pounds in 2024, if I'm not mistaken. That's actually slipped to 20th globally in terms of IPO rankings specifically, with only 18 IPOs happening in 2024. So as you think about the London and Stock Exchange in that context, you know how do you position yourself? How should we think about that?
IPO Activities: Hong Kong vs London
00:03:12
Speaker
Yeah, well, I think there's a number of different dynamics within that. At the moment, we have the largest pipeline since 2005. So actually, things are picking up remarkably. One of the great issues and from a timing point of view is just the practicals for us. Companies tend to wait until they've got their audited financials at the end of the year. So we tend to have a quieter first quarter than is the case in Asia anyway.
00:03:34
Speaker
So that's one of the different dynamics that happens in terms of league table preparation. And also a lot of the issuers that came to our market last year actually came as introductions.
00:03:45
Speaker
So they were listing their shares on our market, but they didn't actually need to raise primary capital. So we added about 60 billion of market cap to our market through new issues last year, but not all of that would show up in the IPO i see tables. And some of this were companies that were moving their primary listing to London from other venues. And so the dynamic is slightly different.
Reforms in London's Market Rules
00:04:06
Speaker
In terms of the range of companies that we have in the pipeline at the moment, we have more direct entrants into the FTSE 100 and 250, than at any time any of us can remember within the pipeline.
00:04:17
Speaker
So the same dynamic that the Hong Kong Stock Exchange is seeing and that we know the US will see with some of the big names that we know from the US that are likely to come to market, which will dwarf numbers anywhere in the world, then actually that same dynamic is happening in the UK.
00:04:33
Speaker
The interesting thing is where those companies are coming from. So we have companies from here, ah we have companies from the EU, we have companies from the US, we have companies from the UK. Because London is that place where we are a global financial centre, the investors are the most international, our venue is the most international. More revenue, investors are used to the fact that revenues are coming for the companies that are listed on the London Stock Exchange from all over the world. So they're used to understanding dynamic and global stories. And that's actually what we have found over the course of the last several years. But we needed to make our product fit for purpose because in the yeah UK, the listing rules hadn't changed since the 80s.
00:05:12
Speaker
And as a consequence, over the last five years, we've had the biggest reform agenda for our listing rules of any jurisdiction in the world and the greatest amount of innovation.
00:05:22
Speaker
And the consequence of that is our listing rules, when you put them versus other European rules or the ones here, or the ones in the US, are at least as good if not better. And so that's one of the reasons that's contributing to the strength of the pipeline that we have. Our job is to make sure we are a driver of the UK's place as a global financial centre and equally a driver of the yeah UK domestic economy.
London as a Financial Hub
00:05:42
Speaker
We have to recognise the UK economy is not the size of China's or the size of the US's. And so when you are the natural listing vehicle for Chinese companies or the natural listing vehicle for US companies, then we recognize that certain jurisdictions that have over a billion consumers or over 350, 400 million consumers are going to be slightly different in dynamics. We have to make sure that we work for the companies that are the right size for our economy. I would say this at five foot one, but small but perfectly formed is just as good as very big. We need to make sure that our market works for that and actually we have maintained our position as the leading equity market in Europe by any measure in the five years the last five years and since Brexit in a way that it wasn't predictable necessarily that that would
Advantages of Listing in London
00:06:28
Speaker
have happened.
00:06:28
Speaker
So actually the future is is very bright for us. That's fantastic to hear. So actually a lot of optimism still and perhaps a lesson for all of us to look beyond the statistic and really understand the shape of what's actually happening.
00:06:42
Speaker
I have this phrase that a listing is for life, not just for Christmas. you know from ah From a transaction and reporting on transactions point of view, people can be very focused on the introduction of a company to the market. But actually, in the last five years, over 50% of the companies that have come to market have come and raised follow on capital.
00:06:58
Speaker
In Nasdaq, that's 25% and in NYSE it's 20%.
00:07:02
Speaker
actually London is providing more support for companies to keep executing against their strategy than the US
London's Strengths in Financial Services
00:07:09
Speaker
markets are doing. um And for us, the company doesn't stop functioning on the day that they've stood on the balcony of the IPO. yeah absolutely It is the the trigger to put their foot down and do the next stage of there their work and and their strategic engagement. And so our job is to support them to do that. The yeah UK is the only global stock exchange that is leading in equity debt and funds.
00:07:29
Speaker
yeah We are the largest equity market in Europe, we're the second largest debt market in the world, and we're the largest closed-ended fund market in the world. We've now got the first regulated private securities market to provide crossover between private and public. And we're the first exchange in the world to do on-chain capital raising for private funds.
00:07:45
Speaker
So we have a huge amount of strengths. And that's before you even get into the fixed income FX, commodity strength of London, insurance strength of London. It's impressive. So we have to actually just occasionally walk a bit taller and strut
Opportunities for Asian Markets in London
00:07:58
Speaker
a bit more. i think Yeah.
00:07:59
Speaker
I'd like to get into some of that a bit later on, but just picking up on your comment that there are Asian companies also listed in London. From your perspective, what are the opportunities you see across Asia and how are you capitalizing on that?
00:08:12
Speaker
We work very closely together with Hong Kong. We had the first China Stock Connect with Shanghai and Shenzhen. Raised six billion there with six so companies doing incredibly well and that was very successful. We're continuing to build on that. and we have the most international venue so the DR regime to operate with other jurisdictions as they come on stream London has more capability to do that and in the reform agenda we created an international segment that enables companies who have a primary listing or a first listing in their home jurisdiction to then use the international segment in London without having overly burdensome incremental disclosure obligations and in fact CK infrastructure was the first company to use it and only a month after it came on stream.
00:08:58
Speaker
So that illustrates the opportunity. But as also the biggest the world's second biggest debt market, we have a huge amount of Asian issuers who list on our market for their for their debt as well. From municipalities in Hong Kong, Chinese Green Bonds, Tokyo municipality, I mean across the region. So we have a huge focus there.
Evolving Beyond Traditional Exchanges
00:09:18
Speaker
And then there are lot of funds who are dedicated in this region. and a lot of ETFs. So there's a huge amount of connectivity. um And where we want to be is is that opportunity to be the additional source of pool of capital that is understanding and sensitive to the dynamics of the region that can actually support potentially the domestic market development as well across Asia.
00:09:40
Speaker
So how how is it that you're evolving beyond traditional listing trading venue to support private market liquidity? And how how do you see kind of market oversight and improvement of transparency in private markets. Yeah, so it's it's been a fundamental thing that I've been focused on as CEO of the exchange since I arrived, and in fact even when I was at the FCA. The philosophy I have about stock exchanges is that we are conveners.
00:10:01
Speaker
Our job is to bring together those who have capital with those who need capital in service of an objective. Our job is to create the structure, the rules, the standardization and the confidence to enable people to transact at pace and at scale. And that confidence is important. It's critical. I've always had the view, even when I was a regulator, that if that is valuable for a company when it's public, why is it not valuable for a company at edge every stage of its life?
00:10:24
Speaker
Now, the creation of the AIM market in the UK, which is the most successful growth market in Europe by any measure, it must be one of the most successful in the world, 53% of all of the growth capital raised in Europe in the last 10 years has been raised on A. It's one of the only growth markets in Europe that survives 30 years. We had our 30 year birthday last year. And so we've already been doing that as a venue for 30 years. But the question was in the context of this private market evolution, how can we continue to bring that network effect and that venue value to companies earlier on in their life through their evolution so that we can create a funding continuum.
00:10:58
Speaker
And I would say that the hardest thing a founder should do is come up with a great idea and execute it. It isn't get a PhD in finance to figure out how to navigate, how to finance it.
Introduction to Pisces Regulation
00:11:08
Speaker
yeah And we've kind of created this world of private markets are from Mars, public markets are from Venus. And I haven't read the book, so i don't know which is which. i don't know which to attribute which way. um and And to be blunt, we've kind of made markets that work for the intermediaries and less for the end users and providers of capital.
00:11:23
Speaker
And in addition, often the language is different, the people are different, the processes are different between the private and public markets. The only person in common is the founder of the company that's having to navigate between the two. yeah It's not really client-led or product-led.
00:11:36
Speaker
So our view was how do we build a market that solves for that problem? And how do we get rid of these cliff edges between the private and public markets, both up and down? In other words, companies may choose, for totally rational strategic reasons, to go private for a period of time before they go back to being public. yep Well, how do they maintain a bit of liquidity there?
00:11:56
Speaker
So when I was at the FCA, I sort of started thinking about this idea of a funding continuum. Then the government announced a policy to explore the idea of intermittent liquidity and intermittent disclosure for companies. And we engaged with the government said that's a really good idea.
00:12:11
Speaker
Let's try and figure out how we work this through. well Can you just elaborate on what that means? I'll explain exactly what it means. It created a regulation in the UK called Pisces. which stands for the Private Intermittent Securities and Capital Exchange System Regulation, where the hour is silent.
00:12:25
Speaker
And essentially, Pisces is the world's first regulation to create a crossover market to have periodic liquidity for private companies who can stay private on a multilateral venue. That regulation was created last year in the yeah UK, and we became the first venue in the world to have a regulated license to operate a private market.
00:12:43
Speaker
That is our private securities market. And last month we had our first ever transaction on that market where the underlying was Oxford Science Enterprises, which is a unicorn spun out of Oxford University's spin out.
Democratizing Private Market Access
00:12:55
Speaker
And the logic is very simple.
00:12:57
Speaker
How do you enable a company to choose to have secondary liquidity? So it's not somebody finds a block and they're hawking it around the market, trying see if somebody wants to buy it. This is companies choosing that they want to have a liquidity event in their shares. Now they can choose to have one a one-off or say once a quarter, once every six months, once a year, and they can choose to do it in different formats. The market was designed to solve several problems. First is, if you're an angel and seed investor, very often the clock's ticking, you're like, I had a 10-year horizon, it's 15 years later and I still haven't had a liquidity event, I'd like to recycle my money.
00:13:32
Speaker
But equally, that they're going to get to, well, here's your price. rather than them having a transparent price formation process to know that they're getting a fair price when they exit. In the yeah UK, we're having a big debate about making sure our pension funds are actually diversified into alternatives. But how can they use their existing pipes and plumbing to buy those companies? You have a lot of companies where the VCMP who's sitting on their cap table can could write the last ticket size, but not the next one.
00:13:57
Speaker
So how do they move through? And crucially, how do you provide liquidity for staff and for founders, as a particularly for staff, a in the war for talent, how do you retain them? So all of those problems were problems that were being faced by private companies.
00:14:11
Speaker
So what we did was design a market to solve those problems. It's open to companies all over the world. um And it also does a job of democratizing access to private companies. So we see that as part of a suite yeah of that funding continuum between the private securities market, AIM, and all of the reforms we've also had on the main market, which have made us really match fit to make sure that we are fundamentally changing our proposition.
00:14:36
Speaker
I have a very simple logic for how you build products. If you can reduce the the the conversation down to why would you not, you've built a good product. When it comes to sitting down with London Stock Exchange, we literally just say, how can we help? you know Whether you're a private company, you're thinking about going public, you want to provide employee share liquidity, you want to go to AIM, you want to go to the main market, you want to do it in a manner that will give you index inclusion in a way you wouldn't get in the US. um You want to do it with a profile that you get from being in London. um You want to list your bonds. You want to raise a private fund. Or you want to set up a fund that's listed.
00:15:13
Speaker
ye And and that is that is the proposition for us. And it's much less about just one product than about a complete set of solutions.
London's Competitive Edge and Innovation
00:15:22
Speaker
I think it's fascinating to me ah for me to hear how you speak about it because in a short space of time, you've shown kind of the complexity that lies beyond what people perceive as an understock exchange, but also how the marketplace is being evolved by you. i want to...
00:15:40
Speaker
Pull the word complexity through to my next question. i mean, we live in a world where there's a lot of data localization, regulatory divergence, yeah and dare I say, geopolitical fragmentation as well that are shaping competition between financial centers. yeah when When you think about London in the context of who you would consider to be your competition, where is your durable edge in this very complex, highly rapidly evolving climate?
00:16:06
Speaker
So I think that London has several unique opportunities. One is that we're the only global exchange that does all of the products I've just talked about. We have rule of law, we have common law, which is a legislation that enables you much more innovative than a lot of codified European laws, for example. um We have a legal system where an awful lot of contract is enforced in the UK. um And we have regulators who literally operate without fear or favour and are very well respected around the world and including very much in this jurisdiction.
00:16:36
Speaker
um And we have GMT and we have the most global investor base in the world. So we have all of those core things. The key thing was to make sure that we have the product that works and that we continue to treat people appropriately and without fear or favor, that they know when they come here, we'll come to London, our rules are predictable, reliable, and people will be treated that way. And that's exactly what is happening. um And I think that's the way we think about our unique selling point. and And we are continuing to build on it and we'll continue to innovate. I think the other interesting dynamic is maybe four or five years ago, there was this sense of an inexorable pull to a sort of unipolar
00:17:17
Speaker
kind of center of capital. Actually, over the course of the last several years, that's changed. There is a realization that actually capital markets are sources of national economic security. That's how it's looked at in this region. That's how it's looked at in the US. In the yeah UK for a while, we had a debate about whether that was the thing, but I think we now realize that it is. um And therefore, actually clients want that option as well.
00:17:40
Speaker
they They want the ability to think about different pools of capital that they can access. and I chair a task force for the UK called the Capital Markets Industry Task Force or CMIT. That has a simple vision statement. How do we create the best possible environment in the yeah UK for great companies to start here, grow here, scale here and stay here? And how do we make sure our capital markets have the best possible assets for our policyholders, our pensioners and our savers to have enough money for life events and old age?
00:18:05
Speaker
Not rocket science. doesn't even scrape the size of an economics 101 definition of a capital market. It's actually very rarely how anybody talks about it. But the same principle we apply in our rules is that if that's what the yeah UK wants, we presume everybody else wants that too.
Balancing Growth, Innovation, and Stability
00:18:20
Speaker
In other words, we're going to maximize the chance that people can use London to enable them to be globally consequential from their location. And so we have that philosophical principle that if that's what we want as a nation, we presume everybody else does too. yes So let's set our capital markets up to facilitate that for everybody, which is why we're the most international venue in the world and why international companies do well compared to when they go to the US when they list in London.
00:18:46
Speaker
I think it's interesting because, you know, as as you speak, you know, one thing that's ah very strong in terms of the National London Stock Exchange, of course, is when when you're talking about the the the rules, um the fact that it's yeah the largest international venue, a lot of it also emanates from the brand and the consistency that you've built up over years. yeah And so that kind of leads into your ability to then innovate from where you are with that trust behind you.
00:19:14
Speaker
And perhaps taking that through to my next question, i'm very interested given your views as an ex-regulator on this because sometimes we get the question for me. One of the ways you experience yeah yeah so how do you balance growth and innovation with LSE's responsibility for stability? yeah i you know That's an equation people struggle with sometimes. Yeah, i don't think they're in conflict.
00:19:36
Speaker
Oh, interesting. so Very interesting. I see very few things in life as binary. I describe it that I run a 300-year-old fintech. Our heritage is Jonathan Castagne pinning commodity prices to a coffeehouse door in 1698. The purpose of what we do, to be that convener of capital, to connect those who have it with those who need it in service of an objective, is unchanged in 1698. The manner in which we do it changes radically and has changed radically over the years because of technology, because of market practice, because of the needs of our clients.
00:20:09
Speaker
Our job is to move with the needs of our clients. i mean, if we were to say, sorry, we're not changing, we know you need something different, but this is how we've always done it, we wouldn't be serving our clients and meeting that purpose.
00:20:23
Speaker
So my view and the reason that we've been able to do all this for reform and yet seem, I think, very steady, stable and reliable to all of our counterparties is because that is the plumb line.
Aligning Innovation with Core Purpose
00:20:33
Speaker
That principle of this is our purpose and therefore if we're fulfilling that purpose, we're doing exactly what the ecosystem needs us to do.
00:20:41
Speaker
um Now you have to do it safely. My primary job is to make sure we open on time, close on time and do everything we need to do in between. I run a piece of critical national infrastructure. So the discipline with which we apply the creation of new markets and all that is huge, absolutely huge. But that doesn't mean you don't innovate. I'll finish on the final point on this.
00:21:00
Speaker
People often say change is risky. If the world is is moving around you, not changing is risky. You know? Yes. And that's the thing that people forget, that actually the reason I felt it was really important that we built the private market offering is because the world has changed. The relative weight of private capital versus public capital has changed. the Private markets are here to stay.
00:21:22
Speaker
Great companies and great value creation is happening in the private markets, but venues are inherently democratizing. If your name wasn't on the list from a call sheet from an investment bank, you weren't getting access to that company.
00:21:34
Speaker
Why? That means a certain number of people who already have capital do better, and the people who have capital that invest but aren't on their call sheet don't get the opportunity to get exposure to it. So if you think about that purpose, then it makes perfect sense that you do these things. And everything that we have done, we can tie back to that purpose. That is fascinating.
00:21:53
Speaker
um I'm going to move us on to ah ah an aspect of growth and innovation, and that is the digital market infrastructure.
Future of Digital Market Infrastructure
00:22:02
Speaker
What is a realistic timeline? And maybe you could touch on what it actually means in terms of the adoption of this in the mainstream capital markets. I'm also responsible for digital assets for LSEC and I run our digital market infrastructure.
00:22:15
Speaker
And we already have a tokenization engine that is tokenizing private funds. We've done our first on-chain primary capital raising for those private funds. We're building ever evergreen and secondary liquidity capability at the moment. And we're also now building a DSD so that we can actually make sure that we can manage the corporate action process through that.
00:22:33
Speaker
Now, at the moment, I cannot put the low latency nanosecond and picosecond trading that happens in our matching engine on chain because you would slow the entire global markets down.
00:22:44
Speaker
right um But you can digitize the input pipe and the output pipe. The way I describe it is I send inanimate objects down vaguely intelligent pipes right now. But digitization is about sending an animate object, as it were, a smart contract anywhere it can go in time and space.
00:23:03
Speaker
and And that gives us an opportunity to actually produce markets that work more efficiently but also more compliantly. An awful lot of compliance in our markets is post hoc compliance.
00:23:14
Speaker
Imagine if we could do more ad hoc compliance. In other words, if that trade is not compliant with these series of principles, it cannot happen anyway because the system and the smart contract cannot let it happen. One of the challenges at the moment is a great deal of financial institutions have tested this tech.
00:23:27
Speaker
They know it works. They know it can make it more efficient. But they've all got their own protocol and they've all got their own kit. Actually, one of the things that venues do and infrastructure players do is give people the confidence to build to a standard so that we can create the interoperability so that when people build and invest in that tech, they know that they're going to meet liquidity on the other side, which is the true thing that they're looking to find.
00:23:50
Speaker
So we become the neutral layer on this interoperable technology in the same way we are the neutral layer in equity trading, in bond trading, in clearing, and settlements, etc. And we're basically looking to do exactly the same thing.
00:24:04
Speaker
The nature of the business that we have and the range of asset classes that we engage with just means that we can do it sooner and we don't need to do it big bang. You know, we don't need to go immediately to doing this in the public listed markets and assuming everybody else has built the technology already when they haven't, which is what we've seen in other venues, but actually to go at the pace of adoption and to test
Closing Remarks and Future Outlook
00:24:24
Speaker
it. So that's that's what we're at the It's really encouraging to hear and it it goes to the the conversation we're having earlier around you have to continue to evolve with the market that you're in and be relevant to the participants.
00:24:34
Speaker
And it's encouraging that even technologies like this that still feel a little bit like they're in infancy, yeah is you know something that you're actively working with. And have been for many years. yeah yeah yeah yeah Well, it's been a fascinating conversation. I think I've actually learned a lot about the London Stock Exchange. I thought I knew quite a bit already.
00:24:53
Speaker
When I think about the London Stock Exchange, certainly from people from the outside, I mean, it is a very important piece of kit that has to work. youve said it very simply. um But the fact that you've been able to combine growth innovation with something so important that has to retain its integrity is something that I think a lot of institutions, including ours, struggle with. So if if you'd be willing, we'd love to have you back and you can tell us how you think about these things. What the secret sauce is. The secret sauce. There's always a secret sauce. I'd be delighted to. Thank you.
00:25:22
Speaker
And of course, great seeing you again. Absolutely. forward to the next one. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining us at HSBC Global Viewpoint. We hope you enjoyed the discussion. Make sure you're subscribed to stay up to date with new episodes.