LSE Deputy CEO Charlie Walker: London Needs Capital to Revive Its Struggling Public Markets
Charlie Walker, Deputy CEO of the London Stock Exchange, says London needs capital to revive its struggling public markets. The remark, reported by the Wall Street Journal, comes from the executive who has served as the exchange group's most visible advocate for capital markets reform since his September 2023 appointment to the deputy chief role — a move City A.M. described at the time as part of a "reform offensive."
Walker had been with the London Stock Exchange for six years when he was elevated to deputy chief, continuing to oversee the group's private markets business alongside his broader remit (City A.M.). That dual perspective — public markets leadership paired with private markets oversight — frames his diagnosis of where capital is flowing and why.
At an LSEG Innovation Forum break-out presentation on 4 November 2025, Walker stated that private markets raise more capital than public markets, particularly regulatory-based capital (LSEG). The comment cuts to the structural tension that the FCA's listing regime overhaul, effective 29 July 2024, was designed to address. Under Policy Statement PS24/6, the Primary Markets Effectiveness Review collapsed the old premium and standard listing segments into a restructured category framework, with existing issuers automatically mapped into the new categories on day one (Davis Polk, Goodwin). The final rules were published by the FCA on 11 July 2024 (Latham & Watkins, FCA).
Walker has discussed the reform agenda across multiple forums. In LSEG Issuer Services' publication "Listing the Changes," published 7 May 2024, he addressed the extensive reform occurring in UK capital markets (LSEG Issuer Services). He explored the same themes in a feature for The Trade News, "A deep dive into the ongoing UK capital markets reform agenda" (The Trade News).
The London Stock Exchange has institutionalised these discussions through a series of IPO Forums. The first was held in November 2024, followed by a second on 8 May 2025, both featuring Walker (LSEG, LSEG). The flagship IPO Forum on 14 November 2025, chaired by Walker under the session title "A year of market innovation," was scheduled to close with remarks from Economic Secretary to the Treasury Lucy Rigby KC MP (LSEG, LSEG). The Treasury's presence on the agenda signals that the reform push is not purely an exchange-level initiative but carries government weight.
The broader context for Walker's assertion about capital flows is a UK public listings environment that has thinned materially over the past several years. The FCA's reforms were designed to lower the friction of listing in London — aligning sponsor requirements, disclosure obligations, and dual-class share permissibility with regimes in New York and Amsterdam. Whether that is sufficient depends on whether the supply of capital — both institutional and retail — returns to public markets in volumes that justify the listing cost.
Separately, London Stock Exchange Group's own equity story has shifted. As of an 11 June 2026 Reuters report, LSEG's public push to shed its tag as a likely loser to AI technology was starting to convince some shareholders and lift its share price (Reuters). That narrative is distinct from the listing-reform agenda but feeds into the same question: whether London can reposition itself as a venue where capital formation and technology intersect productively.
Walker's observation about private markets raising more capital than public markets is not a forecast. It is a structural observation about where issuers currently choose to access capital — and the degree to which regulatory requirements, rather than investor demand, drive that choice toward private venues. The FCA's listing reforms target the regulatory-cost component. They cannot, by themselves, redirect capital allocation decisions made by asset owners and fund managers.
What the reforms can do is reduce the marginal cost differential between public and private listing paths. Walker's role, across the IPO Forums, the Innovation Forum, and his published commentary, has been to make the case that the differential is narrowing — and that London's public markets remain a viable venue for capital raising. Whether issuers and investors agree in sufficient numbers is the question that the next cycle of IPO Forum attendance and listing volumes will answer.
