How to Navigate Mid-Market Expansion in 2026

As an outcome of the intro of the UKLR sourcebook in July 2024, both the London Stock Market (LSE) and FTSE Russell made consequential changes to their guidelines. In July 2024, the LSE verified modifications to its Admission and Disclosure Standards to reflect the collapse of the previous premium and basic listing sections into the new business business category.

, chaired by Charlie Geffen. The objective of the taskforce was to consider the potential benefits of the UK moving to a T +1 securities settlement cycle and lay out how this change could be executed.

On 19 February 2025, the UK government announced it accepted the suggestion and the UK market plans to transfer to a T +1 settlement cycle on 11 October 2027. Among the suggestions from the UK Secondary Capital Raising Evaluation resulted in the facility in July 2022 of the Digitisation Taskforce, chaired by Sir Douglas Flint.

Will AI Innovation Scale UK ROI?

In July 2023, the taskforce published an Interim Report (read our summary here) which made a number of recommendations, consisting of: legislation ought to be advanced, and business short articles of association changed, as soon as practicable to stop the issuance of new paper share certificates; the federal government should bring forward legislation to need dematerialisation of all share certificates at a future date; the government needs to seek advice from provider and financier agents on the favored personality of "recurring" paper share interests and whether a time frame must be imposed for the recognition of untraced Ultimate Beneficial Owners (UBOs); andintermediaries must have a responsibility, as a condition of involvement in the cleaning and settlement system, to put in place typical technology that allows them to react to UBO requests from companies within a very brief time frame.

ANSR July UK PRs

Digitisation would target noted companies with a view to reducing costs and waste, and simplifying shareholder interaction. The report proposes extra steps to guarantee that UBOs within the intermediated securities chain would be able to exercise shareholder rights that are presently just ensured for registered shareholders, along with procedures to improve interaction between business and UBOs.