The United Kingdom has attracted $1.8 trillion in private equity investments and $0.95 trillion in foreign direct investments in the past decade and a half. This influx helped shape the corporate landscape, as investors took publicly listed companies private or bought and invested in unlisted ones, senior partner Tunde Olanrewaju and colleagues explain. From 2016 to 2023, nearly 200 UK firms were delisted from the London Stock Exchange via private acquisitions, and only two have since returned to public listing.
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A Sankey diagram depicts the ownership status of companies delisted from the UK stock market since 2016. It shows that of the 197 companies that were once publicly listed, 127 were taken private by private equity firms. Of these 127 companies, 107 remain under the control of the same private equity firms, while 13 were resold to corporate entities, 12 were resold to other private equity firms, and 2 returned to the public markets. The remaining 67 companies were delisted and are now privately owned, either by UK-based corporations (25), by other foreign corporations (35), or by a combination of private equity and other investors (3). One company is now out of business.
Source: PitchBook.
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To read the report, see “Aiming higher: Embedding ‘systematic ambition’ to drive UK corporate growth,” July 15, 2024.