City minister Lucy Rigby says London's listing reforms still need work beyond the stamp duty holiday

City AM framed the interview as Rigby opening the door to further capital markets reform ^[1]. In our view the record supports a narrower reading. It shows a minister stating intent while the tax decision sits with someone else ^[13]. "We need to be cognisant of global competition and vigilant," she said ^[14]. The government, she added, was "continually looking for ways that we can ensure we're being as competitive as possible" ^[2].

Her evidence that the reforms work is the £5.3bn Airtel Money listing, the City's biggest in five years ^[5]. City AM's own account of a subdued IPO year cuts the other way ^[6]. Rigby's claim was itself measured. The reforms "are starting to bear some fruit," she said ^[4]. A float of that size shows that a large issuer was willing to list in London under the current rules. City AM did not report what weighed most in Airtel Money's choice of venue, so the deal cannot show whether the stamp duty holiday decided it ^[5].

Stamp duty is one of several requests competing for room in the same Budget. UK fintech investment fell to £1.8bn in the first half, a decade low, from £5bn a year earlier ^[9]. That is a drop of about 64% ^[15]. Rigby called the figure "not an amount of money to be sniffed at" and said the Treasury was making a "very considerable effort" to improve access to capital ^[10]. Revolut and Monzo have joined Shawbrook and other challenger banks to press for the bank surcharge threshold to rise to £500m from £100m ^[12], a fivefold increase ^[16]. City AM reported that Rigby had also met the bosses of fintech firms iwoca, Clearbank and Modulur ^[11].

For an issuer weighing delay, the open question is whether any further cut would apply to new listings or to all shares. We do not know yet which, if either, the Treasury is weighing. Innovate Finance argues for abolition on ownership grounds. It wants to "help reverse the decline in British ownership of UK companies" ^[7]. Rigby acknowledged the pressure. "I wouldn't be doing my job properly if I hadn't heard many calls to do something about stamp," she said ^[8]. We think a general abolition would give a company that waited nothing that a company listing now would miss, because it would also reach shares still inside the three-year holiday ^[3]. A longer holiday reserved for new floats would be different, since it would reward the company that waited.