The UK stock market is having its best year since 2013. Share prices are up. Trading screens are green. But whilst everything may look fine, there is a crisis looming. The number of new companies joining the market has collapsed. In the first half of 2025, just £182 million was raised through new listings. That’s roughly the same as was raised on the Angola stock exchange!

At the same time, big UK names are drifting away. AstraZeneca, the UK’s largest company, is preparing to list in the US. That means reduced visibility, less influence and around £200 million in lost stamp duty for the Treasury.

If this only affected bankers’ bonuses, few would shed a tear. But when companies list elsewhere, Britain loses something real. Jobs in law, finance and advisory services disappear. So do tax revenues and economic influence. If fewer companies list in London, there are fewer chances for savers and pension funds to invest in British business. Your pension savings could thus be helping Amazon or Lockheed Martin, your employer’s competitors, rather than being invested in Tesco or British Aerospace. You might even be contributing to Elon Musk’s $29 billion ‘interim’ bonus. That’s not just odd. It’s worrying.

One reason the stock market is shrinking is the growing pull of private equity. It offers companies a quieter life. No quarterly reports. No media circus. No listing fees. In private hands, a company’s value stays fixed at the last deal done, not bouncing around with the economy or the daily mood of the markets. But this shift brings a cost. Private companies don’t have to share much. They make big decisions behind closed doors. When firms go private or list overseas, UK savers lose access. The government loses tax. And the whole financial services industry shrinks.

For the UK stock market to survive it just needs to look at football. In the early 1990s, Italy’s Serie A was the world’s top league. The stars were there. Maradona, Klinsmann, even Gazza. But everything changed in 1992. The Premier League was born. TV money exploded. And crucially, the clubs started getting paid. The Premier League understood a basic truth. No clubs, no product. Today, the Premier League is the most valuable league in the world. Because it pays the people who make it great. The London Stock Exchange does the opposite. Companies provide the content, the raw material. Yet they pay to be there. Their data is packaged, sold, and taxed. Everyone profits except the companies themselves. It’s like Spotify charging Ed Sheeran to upload his music, then selling licences off the back of it. No wonder companies are thinking twice.

If Britain wants to stay relevant, it’s time to flip the model. Start rewarding companies for being public. Let AstraZeneca keep half of its stamp duty, for instance. That would provide 100 million reasons a year for the company to stay. And £100m more to the Treasury than it will now get. Apply that logic across the market and more companies might list. And more might stay.

A functioning capital market isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s essential. No listings, no market. No capital, no capitalism. Hopefully AstraZeneca has sounded the alarm. Now finance needs to listen and take a cue from football. It’s time to pay the piper.