Stock Exchange’s boss JULIA HOGGETT admits she is privileged

She is diminutive, dapper and softly spoken, but Julia Hoggett, boss of the London Stock Exchange, pulls no punches in the battle between global stock exchanges to attract multi-billion pound company listings.

‘You should assume we’re going after everything. We fight for everything,’ she says.

The London market has been losing out to rivals, particularly Wall Street, as companies have defected or chosen to list elsewhere.

The next few months could prove a turning point. A blockbuster float by Chinese retailer Shein is on the cards. There is speculation diamond firm De Beers and Boots the chemist may follow. If London can attract these firms, maybe it can start to regain former glories.

Hoggett, who is leading the City’s fightback, is a champion of diversity. As the first lesbian boss at the exchange, she is nothing like the blue-blooded alpha males who have traditionally run the Square Mile.

But she is also the daughter of Baroness Hale – once Britain’s most senior judge – and that background shows how there is still so much more to do, she admits.

She says: ‘Because I’m female, I’m a mother and I’m openly gay, I often get rolled out as a sort of big proof that we’ve cracked it.

‘I’m proof we haven’t cracked it because I come from a very privileged background.’

Hoggett, a Cambridge graduate, has had a career taking her from JPMorgan, via a spell in Dublin at Depfa bank, and back to London at the Financial Conduct Authority, the City regulator. She took over at the LSE three years ago.

Today, after a dry spell for stock markets – and Hoggett stresses that this is a global phenomenon – she says things are looking up for the first time in years.

She will not publicly name the companies she has been courting to list their shares in London.

But she says: ‘We are absolutely seeing that pipeline start to build and cause for optimism.’

She is dismissive of the negativity from some about London – how stocks listed here are undervalued and how the market is in crisis as companies flee to foreign climes.

In reply, she fires off a barrage of statistics and counterarguments. Much of New York’s performance has come from the ‘magnificent seven’ tech stocks: Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook owner Meta, Nvidia and Tesla.

Strip them out, and London’s performance has been in line with New York’s S&P 500.

Some of the companies that have left did so, she says, for reasons particular to their business rather than as part of a general exodus.

Hoggett bristles at the idea that British companies do better on Wall Street, saying: ‘The grass isn’t always greener.’ More stats are reeled off – of the 20 UK companies that have listed in the US in the past ten years, eight have already de-listed. Only four are trading above their flotation price. The rest are down by an average of more than 80 per cent.

Hoggett points out a list of disadvantages for firms seeking their fortune on Wall Street, including an obligation to report every quarter rather than twice a year to the market. There is also the litigation culture in the US, with businesses facing more class action lawsuits ‘by a country mile’.

Not only that, but there are more costs including higher fees for bankers, she says, adding: ‘So the simple reality is it’s not a straightforward exercise in the US, and it is more expensive.’

Surely, though, the simple fact is that companies listing in New York achieve higher valuations?

‘No,’ Hoggett insists. US indices such as the Nasdaq are heavily skewed towards tech companies, which tend to trade at a high multiple of their earnings. But if you look at like-for-like comparisons of businesses in the same sector, the valuations are no different.

But perceptions are hard to shift and Hoggett says she has to spend a lot of her time ‘mythbusting’.

‘I’m not going to go into any specifics,’ she says, ‘but it’s fair to say that I and my team talk to numerous companies and their advisers across the market all the time.’

All capital markets, including London, face the challenge of firms going private to raise funds, Hoggett says, arguing the UK is also going through ‘the largest reform agenda in a generation’.

Those changes include simplifying listing rules, as well as a landmark agreement by big pension funds to allocate billions of pounds to investment in British growth companies. This means the UK is making changes to tackle looming issues ‘unlike the US’, she says.

Why should we care about keeping British companies listed in Britain? She argues that to do well in the US, companies need to move most of their operations there. That runs the risk of being bad for jobs and research in the UK.

What does she make of those who think London should not be opening its door to the likes of Chinese fast fashion group Shein – shunned by US authorities due to forced labour allegations? Will that make the UK the ‘last resort’ for firms with dubious records.

Hoggett won’t comment on individual companies, but says the argument doesn’t make sense. Any company that wants list in London and meets its standards should be allowed to, she argues.

She also says the stock market is not just about flotations.

She cites capital raising, such as National Grid’s £7 billion rights issue, which will be the biggest of its kind in the world in the second quarter.

‘A listing is for life, not just for Christmas,’ is how she sums it up. London, she says, is the equal of anywhere in enabling companies to raise the capital they need.

She is reluctant to talk about politics. But her long-held views on diversity seem to put her at odds with Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch, who has urged regulators to kill off a proposal to impose equality quotas on financial firms.

She does not comment directly on Badenoch’s views but says there are ‘remarkably talented’ people who have not been given ‘the opportunity to thrive’.

Her mother, Baroness Hale, was at the centre of one of Britain’s biggest political storms, when she led Supreme Court judges in a 2019 ruling that the Government had acted illegally by suspending Parliament in the run-up to Brexit.

Hoggett says she is privileged to have had a ‘ringside seat’ at her mother’s career, adding: ‘Seeing how my mother has navigated these things, I hope a little bit may have worn off on me.’

She and her partner live on the same street as her mother in London, which ‘is quite useful,’ she laughs. Her own domestic arrangements are split between London and Dublin, where she goes every other weekend to see her children with her former partner – and has been doing for the past 14 years.

‘You make the commitment to your children because your children are both wonderful human beings and your responsibility and that’s how your life is structured.’

How does she spend time off? Golf and, having been brought up in Manchester, supporting Manchester United – though that, she says, ‘doesn’t cause me to relax very much’.