The UK government’s ongoing battle to attract companies to London’s stock exchange has yielded few results among private equity, as British companies eschew the public markets in favour of alternative exit routes.
According to PitchBook’s 2026 UK Private Capital Breakdown, only eight UK-headquartered companies with PE backing have gone public over the past five years. Of those, two were priced this year—alloy components maker DPC Holdings and geophysical services company Metatek—but neither took place in London.
UK companies are increasingly choosing to list abroad rather than domestically, with the share of UK businesses listing at home falling from 71% in 2019 to 46% in 2025.
The United Kingdom isn’t just struggling to attract IPOs. There have been more delistings from the LSE than new listings since 2022, and increasingly, those companies are falling into the hands of PE sponsors. In the first half of this year, take-privates accounted for around 20% of realised deal value in UK PE, up from about 13% in 2025.
The UK’s weakening IPO market is keeping sponsors reliant on sponsor-to-sponsor and corporate acquisitions. Secondary buyouts have emerged as a key trend for the UK’s PE market, accounting for six of the top 10 deals in the first half of 2026, including Macquarie Asset Management’s $1.5 billion acquisition of Energy Assets Group from investors like EDF Invest and Asterion Industrial.
The UK government has taken several steps to guide IPOs toward improvement. Last week, the Financial Conduct Authority simplified IPO rules to support UK listings to compete more effectively with global markets by removing the seven-day waiting period for connected research during an IPO and simplifying information-sharing requirements for issuers and firms.
The UK government announced a three-year stamp duty exemption for newly listed companies in 2025. It also announced a new listings task force, supported by a concierge service designed to assist companies exploring London as a listing destination. The Treasury and Number 10 have even reached out to PE firms directly, convening meetings with the likes of Hg Capital, CVC Capital Partners, and EQT to understand why they are not listing their portfolio companies in the UK, the Financial Times reported.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on PitchBook.com.
