London On The Back Foot

The prospect for U.K. stockbrokers has never been grimmer. The London Stock Market is dying; even the exchange believes its day may be numbered if the investment environment isn’t changed.

Back around the dotcom, the U.K. government frogmarched the pension industry out of shares and into bonds and this has drained liquidity. Then you have the pesky 0.5% transaction tax and then you have the “fog in the channel, continent cut off” Brexit, where 500 million people lost easy access to a country of 60 million people and 60 million people lost easy access to a country and its markets of 500 million people.