Why UK Leadership Scales Global Strategy

As a result of the intro of the UKLR sourcebook in July 2024, both the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and FTSE Russell made substantial modifications to their guidelines. In July 2024, the LSE validated changes to its Admission and Disclosure Standards to reflect the collapse of the previous premium and standard listing segments into the new industrial company category.

, chaired by Charlie Geffen. The objective of the taskforce was to think about the possible benefits of the UK moving to a T +1 securities settlement cycle and detail how this modification could be implemented.

On 19 February 2025, the UK federal government announced it accepted the recommendation and the UK market means to move to a T +1 settlement cycle on 11 October 2027. Among the suggestions from the UK Secondary Capital Raising Evaluation resulted in the facility in July 2022 of the Digitisation Taskforce, chaired by Sir Douglas Flint.

Strategic Review of Mid-Market Capital Markets

In July 2023, the taskforce released an Interim Report (read our summary here) which made a number of suggestions, consisting of: legislation needs to be advanced, and company articles of association changed, as quickly as practicable to stop the issuance of new paper share certificates; the federal government ought to advance legislation to require dematerialisation of all share certificates at a future date; the federal government ought to seek advice from company and investor representatives on the preferred disposition of "recurring" paper share interests and whether a time limit ought to be enforced for the identification of untraced Ultimate Beneficial Owners (UBOs); andintermediaries must have a commitment, as a condition of involvement in the cleaning and settlement system, to put in location common technology that enables them to react to UBO demands from providers within an extremely short time frame.

ANSR July UK PRs

Digitisation would target listed companies with a view to reducing expenses and waste, and simplifying investor interaction. The report proposes additional procedures to make sure that UBOs within the intermediated securities chain would be able to work out shareholder rights that are currently just ensured for signed up investors, as well as measures to improve communication between business and UBOs.