UK Funds Seek Government Help as IPO Drought Drags On

The U.K.’s IPO drought from last year has reportedly carried over into 2025.

Just seven companies have floated and raised capital on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) this year, the Financial Times (FT) reported Monday (Sept. 8), citing data from Dealogic.

That’s compared to 231 companies in the U.S., the report said, adding that nine companies had floated during the same time frame last year on the LSE, versus 129 in the U.S.

The situation has pressured asset managers in recent years, leading some of the largest funds in the U.K. to seek “urgent” action as they move into private assets to alleviate the strain.

The FT added that the drought of initial public offerings (IPOs) is leading top fund managers to campaign for government policy to go further to attract more capital to London and entice companies to float on the LSE.

“We need help from government if we are to turn Britons into a nation of investors rather than a nation of savers, which in turn makes the London Stock Exchange an attractive place to list,” said Matthew Beesley, CEO of Jupiter Fund Management.

Richard Oldfield, chief executive of Schroders, said it will take more “joined-up thinking” to usher in more IPOs in the U.K.

“A lot of good work has already been done, such as the regulatory and pensions-focused reforms,” he said. “But we must get the incentives right for people to invest in the UK, across both public and private markets.”

The report adds that the lack of U.K. IPOs has been due in part to a dwindling amount of capital in Great Britain. That is down to domestic pensions exiting London-listed equities after an accounting change decades ago, as well as the surging popularity of cheap tracker funds, which have more exposure to global stocks.

The IPO drought is not exclusive to the U.K. A midyear report from Bloomberg News found that in the first half of 2025, seven venture capital (VC) backed companies had gone public, the smallest number in at least a decade.

Private equity-backed companies are facing a similar fate. As of June, the volume of PE-backed IPOs in Europe and the U.S. had dropped to nine, down from 116 during the same period in 2021, a time considered the heyday for those IPOs.