London Stock Exchange in decline

 BBC Business this morning reported an exodus of companies quoted on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) to trading floors new. The LSE was overtaken last year by the Paris Bourse as the largest stock exchange in Europe. CRH, a major building materials firm, has already announced its decision to move to New York. Today, ARM Holdings, once an icon of UK electronic logic development, said that it was following suit. There is more detail in Simon Jack's briefing here.

London's FTSE All-Share index (.FTAS) is worth $2.8 trillion, according to Refinitiv data [Reuters]. The corresponding figure in 2007 was $4.7tn. There were further peaks of a touch over $4.5tn in 2016 and 2021, and the post credit-crunch trough of $2.6tn has yet to be reached, but the trend seems to be relentlessly downward. 

So far, as the Reuter report says, other aspects of London's financial business continue to thrive. However, to this naïve observer, it seems that the old saying that "a fish rots from the head" must apply. Certainly, the hopes of some extreme economists, that a 21st century boom in financial services would mean that a proudly independent UK would never need to manufacture or grow anything again, recede further.

There is a plaintive cry from some quarters that cutting LSE regulation will bring the big stocks back. I would point out the fate of the least-regulated stock exchange in North America, that of Vancouver. Once described as a trading Wild West, it closed in 1999.