IFLR quotes Victoria Younghusband on new UK listing rules unveiled by the FCA

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has announced a major shake-up to its listing rules, in a bid to preserve the UK’s competitiveness by allowing a wider range of companies to issue shares on a UK stock exchange.

The FCA called the changes the biggest in over three decades, adding that the rules set out a simplified listings regime with a single category and streamline eligibility for those companies seeking to list their shares in the UK. They take effect on July 29.

Other notable changes include a scrapping of the requirement for companies to put significant or related party transactions to a vote of shareholders and the enhancement, for a maximum of 10 years, of voting rights for institutional shareholders under dual-class share structures implemented at the time of an initial public offering (IPO).

Companies will still need shareholder approval for what the FCA refers to as “key events”, like reverse takeovers and decisions to remove their shares from an exchange.

In light of the changes, Victoria Younghusband, Partner in our Corporate team, is interviewed by International Financial Law Review (IFLR). She comments:

I think the big pluses are that shareholder approval is no longer required for major transactions - what we used to call class one transactions - or for related-party transactions, and the emphasis is instead on disclosure [...]

"You've got to have a circular, or you had to have a circular with specified information, and it could be two or three months getting there. In a competitive situation, you can't do that, and similarly with third-party transactions [...]

"[The new regime] is certainly new and I think it's more competitive [...] I think the jury might still be out on whether it's simplified.

"It's simplified in that you've only got one category of commercial company, but when you look into the weeds, it's a bit more complicated than that, but, overall, a good day for UK equity capital markets.

Read the full article in IFLR here (subscription required).

Victoria also wrote a longer article on the topic for Thomson Reuters' PLC Magazine - You can read that here.