Senior investment experts this week cast doubt on the ability of recent listing reforms to attract new IPOs to London.

The changes—a loosening of rules for dual-class shares and the end of shareholder votes for significant transactions—went ahead last week, despite opposition from bodies such as the International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN), a body representing investment managers.

At the ICGN’s annual conference in London this week, speakers took aim at the reforms.

Jenn-Hui Tan, chief sustainability officer at fund manager Fidelity, said that Singapore and other Asian markets had introduced dual-class shares, but had failed to win IPOs from the US.

He argued that cherry picking US-style arrangements, such as dual class shares or high chief executive pay, would not guarantee success in winning IPO business back to London.

“The US is special for a whole constellation of factors,” he said, “not least the whole world’s reserve currency and having one of the most dynamic economies in the world.”

Tan was speaking in a session devoted to the subject of attracting IPOs to the UK and Europe in the face of enormous success in the US markets.

Last week, within days of Labour taking over UK government after 14 years in opposition, the Financial Conduct Authority announced reforms that would end the use of sunset clauses for dual-class shares, and lift requirements for shareholder vote on qualifying transactions.

The ICGN caused anger in the City when, in June, it called for a halt to the listings reform, arguing that the FCA had failed to listen to investors’ concerns.

Listings fall

The reforms come at a time when there is deep concern about the number of listings in London compared with the US. The worries prompted a long-running lobbying campaign by the Capital Markets Industry Taskforce, a campaign body led by London Stock Exchange chief executive Julia Hoggett, which, in October last year, persuaded the then Conservative government to abandon planned new corporate reporting requirements.

Hoggett has also led efforts to talk up the need for higher levels of CEO pay as part of making the City more competitive. Her own boss, David Schwimmer, chief executive of the London Stock Exchange Group, saw his own pay significantly boosted this year.

In ICGN’s IPO discussion, Tan added that he thought “silver bullets” would not create new IPOs. “All it means is that your listings get transferred from one market to another.”

He argued the better way to view IPOs was to view them as part of a “broad, holistic” approaching to scaling SME in an economy. “That to me is the social purpose of having your own stock market,” Tan said.

The conference also heard of the need for the “consolidation” of European stock markets as part of the EU’s proposed Capital Markets Union.

Rients Abma, executive director of Eumedion, a body representing Dutch institutional shareholders, said: “If you are striving to be a real competitor to the US, I don’t think we should proceed with 27 individual exchanges. You have to create a deep, liquid equity market and therefore a precondition is real consultation within the stock exchanges.”