Proceeds are up, confidence is up, and yet everyone I speak to keeps hedging their optimism
Good Numbers, Cautious Voices
By Chelsea Bloom. Total proceeds from London IPOs nearly trebled in 2025 compared to the year before, and a run of larger transactions toward the end of that year has, according to KPMG’s own analysis, created a genuinely credible springboard heading into this year. By any reasonable reading of the headline numbers, the City should be popping something fizzy. Instead, every finance director and senior partner I have spoken with recently across Liverpool Street and the wider Square Mile describes the mood in noticeably more measured terms than the numbers alone would suggest.
Part of this, I think, is simply scar tissue from a genuinely difficult few years. But part of it, listening carefully to what people are actually saying rather than the topline figures they are citing, is a specific and more interesting worry: that listing numbers alone are the wrong metric to be celebrating in the first place.
The Metric That Actually Matters More
When financial services leaders were surveyed on what would genuinely define success for London’s IPO market going forward, stronger post-IPO performance ranked considerably higher as a priority than a simple increase in the raw number of listings. That is a telling distinction. A trebled proceeds figure driven by a handful of large, well-supported transactions is a different, more durable story than a market chasing volume for its own sake, and the practitioners I speak with seem considerably more focused on the former than the topline number a press release would prefer to lead with.
Further Reading
Full analysis is available via KPMG’s Make The City Thrive report, with additional market coverage from City AM.
A City Learning To Undersell Its Own Strengths, Then Correcting Course
KPMG’s own analysis makes an observation I have heard echoed privately by more than one City veteran: that it is a particularly British habit to downplay genuine strengths even while sitting on them. If London wants global capital to actually notice this recovery, rather than assume it a temporary blip before the next round of gloomy Brexit retrospectives, the City may need to get considerably more comfortable simply saying, out loud and repeatedly, that the numbers are good.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/