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The UK financial regulator plans to publish all trading data for London-listed shares, the Financial Times reported on Monday. The Financial Conduct Authority wants to tackle a ‘drastic under-reporting’ of market liquidity, that has led some companies to move their listings to the US. ‘The truth is we have way more liquidity here than is often reported and that is just silly,’ Simon Walls, interim director of markets at the FCA told the FT in an interview. ‘We are talking to loads of parties at the moment about whether the FCA can, at a little bit of risk to ourselves, step in and just sort this out,’ he said. The FT said this would be a stopgap before the regulator’s plan for a single stream of trading data, which is due to come into effect next year. The regulator said UK market share liquidity data is under-reported as it only includes the London Stock Exchange’s central limit order book and excludes many trades, including periodic orders at scheduled auctions and in venues such as dark pools. The FT reported that people close to the LSE say that potential listing candidates see lower liquidity in the UK than in the US or other countries as a potential obstacle to listing in London. Walls said people in the market know the under-reporting of liquidity is a problem. ‘But it does dog us because sometimes when an issuer has historically chosen to move from the UK to the US, one of the thoughts is that liquidity is lower in the UK and often it’s not true,’ he told the FT. Between January and September last year, the FCA estimates that there were 270 million transactions in UK shares recorded in central limit order book data. The regulator said the total notional amount of share trading over that period ‘appears to be around four times as large’. The FCA is currently consulting on proposals to create a consolidated tape that would show all UK trading data, but it is only expected to be ready next year. ‘We’re intending to have an interim [solution] just to plug this gap, so that when people report - or are making these quick assessments - of what liquidity is like in London, we can just get it out there that it is way higher than is often reported,’ Walls said. Copyright 2026 Alliance News Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
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