London's Race to the Bottom Is a Big Gamble
Looser rules designed to generate more business for the City risk undermining shareholder protection.
The square mile prepares to loosen up.
Photographer: Hollie Adams/Bloomberg“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently,” legendary investor Warren Buffett once observed. That’s advice worth hearing, for global financial centers as well as individuals and businesses. Is London listening?
Regulators are poised to enact the biggest changes to the UK’s listing rules in more than three decades, in an effort to reverse a dearth of initial public offerings and make the City a more attractive place to raise equity capital. Among other things, less stringent rules would relax restrictions on dual-class shares, drop the requirement for companies to show a three-year financial track record and dispense with shareholder votes on significant and related-party transactions.