No time to lose: The City must be the force behind reinvigorating ailing markets

Another day, another complaint from a listed firm that things have not entirely gone to plan.

Yesterday it was the Aquis-listed Quantum Exponential Group, which invests in computing businesses. Long story short, the small-cap operations wants to delist: not enough liquidity, and investors interested only in picking up private firms rather than dealing with troublesome markets. 

The fact that this seems a tired old tune shouldn’t turn us off to its urgency. Equity markets matter; capital markets as a whole need a proper public market, if nothing else to give private investors the confidence that they might be able to make a killing when it comes to an IPO. 

Yet still the urgency to reform and reinvigorate our capital markets is missing – reviews gather dust, and most conversations with Whitehall officials this year have involved admissions that with an election coming up, there won’t be much going on. 

The remaining cheerleaders of London’s equity markets point to a wider global slowdown in IPOs and a string of disastrous floats in New York, which does aptly demonstrate that the grass is not always greener on the other side.

There have, though, been plenty of successful floats elsewhere, too, and the cries that everybody’s having a tough time do look a little like a struggling comedian blaming their flat reception on a bad crowd. 

One thing is fairly clear, though, time is not going to be the tonic here, only action.

In lieu of political will, it will come down to City grandees keeping up the pressure so that an incoming government has no choice but to act, and push the laggards to get with the programme.

Our pages remain open to any and all complaints.