Global investors are warning that a proposed overhaul of listing rules to attract more growth companies to the UK market will erode shareholder rights, undermine the country’s reputation for corporate governance and harm its attractiveness as a financial centre.
The International Corporate Governance Network, a group of global institutional investors with $77tn of assets under management, has written to UK chancellor Jeremy Hunt and to the Financial Conduct Authority regulator — which drew up the planned changes — criticising what the FCA has called “the most far-reaching reforms in the UK’s listing regime in three decades”.
Recipients also included the Financial Reporting Council accounting watchdog and the London Stock Exchange.