This photo is of Paternoster Square taken from above St Paul’s Cathedral with the London Stock Exchange on the far side of an odd column with a pineapple on the top. Next door to LSE is my nearest Sainsburys, my dentist is in the Vestry House the other side of LSE, Paternoster Square is currently filled with a massive wide screen for tourists to watch adverts. It should be a success story , Paternoster Square, but all us locals know what isn’t happening in the Stock Exchange.

The FT’s editorial board are protesting this morning

This year there have been a string of de-listings and they haven’t been replaced by new companies launching on the LSE.

Equity markets across the developed world are struggling. Uncertainty has sapped IPO activity everywhere. The gravitational pull of America’s vast investor base and deep capital markets also remains a force to be reckoned with, despite Donald Trump’s meddling. But for a nation as starved of growth and investment as Britain, reviving its public market is imperative. The LSE has experienced a particularly stark decline. Primary listings on the UK bourse have dropped over 40 per cent since the global financial crisis. The constant drain is self-reinforcing: as listings dry up, liquidity and investor activity thins, and on it goes.

The article suggests there are things that can be done to improve liquidity in British stocks (and attract overseas companies to list here). The 0.5% stamp duty could be slashed to bring it in line with peers, equity ISAs could get a boost (or Cash ISAs a clip). Rachel Reeves and Torsten Bell’s efforts to increase UK investment from UK pension funds could be more attractive than threat to Trustees.

Not mentioned but a problem to everyone from GVCA to the House of Lords (Altman and Bowles especially) is the failure of investment trusts to be an easy way to invest in illiquid private companies. The Pension Schemes Bill mentions secondary stock markets run by the LSE but without great conviction.

The truth is London is very good at being global but not very good at being local. I notice this living here. The people who work in the City, hang out in its bars and restaurants are not talking about what is going on in the UK but instead of Europe, America and the Far East. It is as if we are a platform for everyone but ourselves.

Another week, another blow to London’s capital markets. This time it was the turn of Wise, one of the UK’s brightest tech stars of the first half of the decade. It announced it would switch its main listing to New York. Big departures have included cyber security firm Darktrace and Hargreaves Lansdown, the investment platform, both taken over by private equity firms.

Perhaps the worry that Pension Funds have expressed about investing in UK private funds is a worry about the lack of listed opportunities. Unilever’s Welsh ice-cream business has listed in Amsterdam, not my local stock market!

I am looking forward to hearing from American financier Arun Muralidhar tomorrow who is talking about Mansion House at the Pension PlayPen. I hope he will touch upon Britain’s malaise as expressed by my neighbours working in the City, for whom Paternoster is a bit of an embarrassment.

Coffee Morning – Anti Mansion House! – In conversation with Dr Muralidhar Attending CPD included