Growth Capital by The QCA The Quoted Companies Alliance

New York versus London is often the battle that dominates the capital markets conversation but the real stand-off - particularly for smaller, growing companies - is public versus private.



When is the right time for founders and their key backers to go public? How can the stock market increase its appeal so that more entrepreneurs take the plunge?



And what do the latest efforts to blur the divide between public and private mean for growing businesses in the future?



Taking part in this conversation are two seasoned business builders.

Ray Anderson has more than 30 years’ experience in starting, growing and selling businesses. He is executive chair and founder of Bango, the AIM-listed digital payments and marketing expert that connects online merchants with more paying customers. Founded in 1999, the company works with everyone from start-ups to some of the world’s largest online businesses, including Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

Steve Rigby is co-chief executive of Rigby Group, one of the UK’s largest family-owned firms with annual turnover of £3.8 billion. The business comprises IT services, several tech investments and a property arm that spans regional airports, hotels, residential and commercial. Rigby is also on the board of Family Business UK and chair of the Private Business Commission, launched to investigate why many UK companies struggle to maximise their growth potential.

Growth Capital is presented by the QCA’s chief executive, James Ashton.

It is sponsored by Mazars, the audit, tax and advisory firm helping listed businesses grow with purpose.

Mazars is an international audit, tax and advisory firm. Operating in over 95 countries and territories around the world, we combine local knowledge with global perspective to help our clients build and grow their businesses with confidence. In the UK, we are amongst the largest firms in the sector and are a leading auditor to Public Interest Entities (PIEs).

Given what 2023 left behind – lingering inflation, political strife, an IPO drought and the rise of artificial intelligence - what does 2024 hold for investors? This episode sets the scene.

 

The look-ahead conversation features two fund managers with decades of experience and a long-standing commitment to either end of the London market.

 

Nick Train is co-founder of the investment firm Lindsell Train and portfolio manager for UK equities including the FTSE 250 investment trust Finsbury Growth & Income whose holdings include large caps such as Diageo, Sage and Burberry. Before Lindsell Train, Nick was head of global equities at M&G and also spent 17 years at GT Management.

 

Gervais Williams is a small cap specialist, head of equities at Premier Miton and the President of the Quoted Companies Alliance. He is a frequent media commentator, a member of the AIM Advisory Panel at the London Stock Exchange and formerly spent 17 years at the fund manager Gartmore.

 

Growth Capital is presented by the QCA’s chief executive, James Ashton, who is also a non-executive director of Finsbury Growth & Income.



Growth Capital is sponsored by Mazars, the audit, tax and advisory firm helping listed businesses grow with purpose.



Mazars is an international audit, tax and advisory firm. Operating in over 95 countries and territories around the world, we combine local knowledge with global perspective to help our clients build and grow their businesses with confidence. In the UK, we are amongst the largest firms in the sector and are a leading auditor to Public Interest Entities (PIEs).

They are the doorstopper documents that just keep growing. QCA research found that company annual reports add an average 5,800 words every year.



Who’s reading them? And what’s the value of a once-a-year document when investors can access reams of real-time data?

After recent governance rethinks, what else needs to change to formulate a package that offers transparency and inspires corporate confidence?



This conversation features two guests from QCA member firms:

 

Phil Austen, sales director at Perivan, the UK’s number one producer of annual reports, IPO prospectuses and investor communications. Phil’s career in financial printing began 35 years ago at St Ives and his own printing consultancy, Corporate Ink, was acquired by Perivan in 2017;Andrew Jones, director and head of narrative reporting at Mazars, who has over twenty years’ experience of technical accounting, performance measurement in capital markets and non-financial reporting.

How can good governance support growth?

The QCA Corporate Governance Code is a set of flexible principles designed to help companies run better.

It is 10 years old and used today by almost 900 companies, whose shares are traded on AIM, the Main Market and the Aquis Stock Exchange.

As we launch the first new version of the Code since 2018, what’s changed – and what’s stayed the same?

This conversation features two guests from QCA member firms who lead our QCA Corporate Governance Expert Group and have played key roles in developing the new Code this year:

Will Pomroy, head of impact engagement for equities at the investment manager Federated Hermes;

Laura Nuttall, director and head of governance, compliance and company secretarial at ONE Advisory, a firm that supports a range of publicly traded companies.

Also featuring is the QCA’s head of policy Jack Marshall who has led the Code revision internally.

It’s the detailed analysis of quoted companies’ prospects that drives investor interest and ultimately liquidity – the lifeblood of any market.

 

Yet equity research has withered on the vine since its cost was separated out from brokers’ trading commissions under the EU’s MIFID II rule changes in 2018.  A carve out for smaller stocks had little impact.

 

A recent government review recognised its value as a “public good” and proposed ways to improve the volume and value of what gets written. The question that remains is: who pays for it?

 

This conversation features two guests from QCA member firms.

 


Rachel Kent is the author of the investment research review carried out for the UK government. She’s a senior partner in the financial services regulatory team at law firm Hogan Lovells, advising banks, insurers and wealth managers on their affairs. Rachel was also heavily involved in HM Treasury’s Kalifa Review into the fintech sector.

 


David Johnson is research director at Allenby Capital, an AIM Nominated Adviser and Broker offering a variety of integrated funding solutions for smaller, fast growing companies. Before he joined Allenby in 2016, David head of research or analyst at various firms including Northland Capital Partners, Daniel Stewart and Altium capital.

 

Growth Capital is presented by the QCA’s chief executive, James Ashton.

 

It is sponsored by Mazars, the audit, tax and advisory firm helping listed businesses grow with purpose.

 

Mazars is an international audit, tax and advisory firm. Operating in over 95 countries and territories around the world, we combine local knowledge with global perspective to help our clients build and grow their businesses with confidence. In the UK, we are amongst the largest firms in the sector and are a leading auditor to Public Interest Entities (PIEs).

As the City of London comes back to life this autumn, how’s the mood corporately, economically, politically?

Inflation is sticky and interest rates are still rising. What will bring back the IPOs that are the lifeblood of many City firms?

And with a general election probably no more than a year away, how will the Chancellor unlock investment and increase the attractiveness of London as a listing venue in his Autumn Statement?

This conversation features two guests from QCA member firms:


Simon Bridges, head of the European investment banking division at Canaccord Genuity, a technology sector specialist who has worked on numerous equity capital market deals, mergers and acquisitions in a career spanning PwC, HSBC and Bridgewell;


George Lagarias, chief economist at Mazars Wealth Management, who has many years of financial market experience working as an analyst, investment strategist and fund manager, including with EFG, Close Brothers and Alpha Bank in Greece.