Wise's move to a US primary listing is the latest in a pattern that should concern anyone who cares about the UK's long-term position in global financial markets.
Wise's decision to shift its primary listing to New York is not a surprising one, but it is a clarifying one. The company is not leaving because the UK is an unpleasant place to build a business. It is leaving because the depth of capital, the risk appetite of investors, and the governance structures available in the US market are materially better suited to what Wise needs at this stage of its development.
The pattern is not new, and Wise is not alone. ARM Holdings, widely regarded as one of the crown jewels of British technology, chose Nasdaq in 2023 despite significant government effort to retain the listing in London. Revolut, which has spent years working through an FCA banking licence process that its founders have described as opaque and slow, continues to evaluate where it lists. Deliveroo was acquired by DoorDash for less than half its IPO valuation, a valuation that was itself already discounted against what a comparable US listing would have commanded.
The structural reasons are well understood. UK institutional investors remain risk-averse towards high-growth, pre-profit companies. The liquidity available in US markets is deeper, the analyst coverage more extensive, and the technology-literate capital base significantly larger. Governance structures that founders prefer, dual-class share structures that preserve founder control, are incompatible with FTSE index inclusion rules, which limits institutional exposure and reduces the benefit of a London listing for a high-growth firm.
The regulatory dimension reinforces this. In a market where one of the most prominent UK fintechs has been waiting years for a banking licence decision, the signal to early-stage firms considering their future options is clear. Speed of regulatory response is itself a competitive factor in financial services, and London is not winning that competition.
The long-term consequence, if the pattern continues, is that the UK becomes a feeder system for the very markets it is trying to compete with. Companies are founded here, built here with UK talent and UK capital, and then list and scale primarily in the US because that is where the conditions are most favourable at the critical moment of growth.
Fixing this requires changes to FTSE listing rules, a shift in institutional investor culture towards growth companies, faster and more transparent regulatory processes, and a genuine government commitment to maintaining London's competitiveness that goes beyond rhetoric. Some of these are in motion. Whether they move quickly enough to change the calculus for the next generation of UK technology firms remains an open question.