Very interesting to read that Sherry Coutu and Joanna Shields have been appointed non exec directors of the London Stock Exchange Group plc– itself a FTSE100 company.
I’ve known Sherry for many years. She made her fortune for iii (at one stage it was valued at over £1b) and is now a serial entrepreneur. Sherry also serves on the Advisory Board of Linkedin. Joanna is the Ch and CEO of Tech City and, before that had stints at Facebook, AOL and Google.
Very much in favour of these appointments as it shows – twice over – that the LSE is deadly serious about attracting tech companies – small and hopefully large – to IPO in London. Many now believe that the UK is the ‘best place to build a tech company”. But IPOs are still few and far between. In our conversations there is undoubtedly a Catch 22 situation. One of the reasons given is that the paucity of larger quoted tech companies on the LSE means that there are few analysts and the ecosystem which surrounds tech companies. If only we could get a couple, like Sophos or King or Shazam, to IPO here the logjam might be removed.
In many ways London is a better place than NASDAQ. NASDAQ is great if your valuation is $1b+. But you’ll get ignored if you are smaller. In the UK, you’ll get much greater attention. If you are UK-based already, do you really want to up sticks and move your family etc? Because you won’t be taken seriously on NASDAQ unless you are in situ. NASDAQ costs a lot more than the LSE too. Then there is the old chestnut about valuations. But if you look at Wandisco and other recent UK tech IPOs, even that difference is fast being eroded.
So, we wish Sherry and Joanna and the LSE the very best. It will certainly do TechMarketView no harm at all if you are mega successful!