Julia Hoggett

Julia Hoggett’s core diagnosis is that Britain “disconnected society from our capital markets” by protecting retail savers out of regulated investing and pushing pensions toward cheap, low-risk assets. Putting defined-benefit pension volatility through corporate P&Ls encouraged CEOs to close and de-risk schemes, while roughly 27,000 small defined-contribution funds were not consolidated as intended and the system was judged on cost rather than net return. Her investor takeaway is that this damage was self-inflicted and therefore reversible: “The great benefit of having done that to ourselves is we can undo it to ourselves.”

The repair requires all “five fingers and a glove,” not another isolated listing-rule change. The UK has modernized rules largely untouched since the 1980s, reversed restrictions that weakened sell-side research, and is consolidating pension funds so they can originate private assets, co-invest and act more like CPPIB or Ontario Teachers’. Eleven large default DC schemes have committed 5% of assets to private companies by 2030, part of replacing the doctrine that “cheap was good” with value-for-money measured by net return.

The claim that ambitious UK companies should automatically list in America is not supported by Hoggett’s data. Over ten years, only 20 UK companies listed in the US and raised more than $100 million; nine have already delisted, only four are trading up, and the remainder are down more than 80%. Her mechanism is that the US serves the Magnificent 7 exceptionally well, but smaller foreign companies can disappear outside major indices and be sold on headlines without index demand pulling them back.

London’s claimed liquidity disadvantage also dissolves under Hoggett’s preferred measures, although stamp duty remains a genuine handicap. Free-float-adjusted turnover is higher in the FTSE 100 than in the S&P 500 or Nasdaq, while Yahoo Finance’s liquidity data was, when last checked, wrong by a factor of over three. Yet Britain charges investors to buy domestic shares but not US or European ones—“a perversity” raising roughly 3–4 billion annually for the Treasury.

Index access and domestic ownership, not exchange “sexiness,” are the strongest elements of London’s pitch. An IPO entering within the FTSE 100’s top 75% by valuation can qualify in five days, whereas US indexation is neither immediate nor assured; 60% of investors in the UK are international, so “the same people who can buy you in New York can buy you in London.” Hoggett’s concern is what happens when Britain loses the upside: Arm rose from about $52 billion to $150 billion in its first year back, yet initially only 1% of its investor base was owned by UK investors.

The host’s sharpest pushback is that London may be losing the developers behind companies such as Revolut, Monzo and Wise to regulation, living costs, crime and friendlier tax regimes. Hoggett answers that Britain deliberately created the fintech sandbox those companies emerged from and can again build the best funding continuum. A 1% increase in real pension returns every year compounds into an “eye-watering” difference; scale, higher-quality management and portfolios of private companies matter more than minimizing headline fees.

Hoggett’s 2035 vision depends as much on culture as mechanics: Britain must back itself, celebrate founders and become “young, scrappy and hungry” for listings. The host says Nick’s company could walk straight into the FTSE 100; Hoggett’s own one-sentence pitch is that London is “at least as compelling” as the US, while retaining access to US investors and avoiding uncertain US indexation. The ultimate test is whether the LSE becomes the default for scaled UK companies financed by domestic capital from startup through public ownership—not merely a “300-year-old fintech” with better rules.

🔗 Original source & video: Julia Hoggett, CEO @ LSEG plc: The Myths and the Reality of The London Stock Exchange