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Chancellor Rachel Reeves will reportedly outline plans for a UK private stock market in her first Mansion House speech on Thursday, in what is said to have been described as a "world first".
City AM reported that Reeves would unveil plans to legislate for a regulated stock exchange system where shares in private companies could be traded in May next year.
The platform, known as Pisces — the Private Intermittent Securities and Capital Exchange System — had been initially proposed by the previous Conservative government.
The proposal was put forward to boost the UK market, by helping support the pipeline of future listings on the public markets.
The UK market has struggled to attract major initial public offerings (IPOs) in recent years, with some companies opting to list in other countries.
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Data released by professional services firm EY in October, there have been just 10 listings on the London stock market year-to-date. These listings raised £584.6m, which was down 47% versus the same period in 2023.
A Treasury source said that Pisces would be "a significant step for our capital markets, giving investors the chance to get in on the ground floor of some of the most exciting companies around and supporting those businesses to grow", according to City AM.
Here's what you need to know about the platform.
What is Pisces?
Former Conservative chancellor Jeremy Hunt put forward the development of an "intermittent trading venue" to act as a bridge between public and private markets in the UK in a set of reforms for the financial services sector — known as the "Edinburgh Reforms" — at the end of 2022.
The idea was to "trial a new class of wholesale market venue that operates on an intermittent basis — improving companies access to capital before they publicly list", according to a Treasury statement.
Hunt then announced the proposed Pisces plans in the 2024 spring budget, with the Conservative government launching a consultation into the platform.
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The consultation said that Pisces would incorporate elements from public markets, "such as those that offer multilateral trading, and elements from private markets that provide greater discretion on what company disclosures should be made public".
This consultation closed under the previous government in April, before the Labour party came back into power in July.
In Labour's first budget in 14 years, unveiled in October, the Treasury said that the government was "committed to delivering" Pisces and that these transactions would be exempt from stamp duty.