The headline numbers look grim, and I will not pretend otherwise. Seven listings in the first half of 2026, a combined market value of new entrants at £2.2bn, and a staggering 27 to 1 ratio of takeover bids to new listings is not the revival anyone ordered for London. The bears will have a field day with those figures, and frankly they are entitled to.

But markets have a habit of turning when sentiment least expects it, and I say that as someone currently working on one of the IPOs in the pipeline. The conversations are real, the mandates are live, and the appetite from issuers and investors alike is more genuine than the data suggests. Rates have settled, commodities have calmed, and the reforms of recent years are quietly doing their job. London still has the least frictional listing regime in Europe, and that is not nothing.

Names like Waterstones and AS Watson are circling the market for good reason, and our own pipeline for the second half looks better than it has in some time, with several transactions at an advanced stage of preparation. The direction of travel, as the EY team put it this week, is encouraging.

Reports of London's death are, as someone once said, greatly exaggerated. Sometimes you have to trust the compass before you can see the destination.