The strong demand for Royal Mail shares could become the watershed moment where retail investors return to share sales. This would give firms another potential revenue stream and also broaden the share ownership in the British market.
Small retail investors sought out Royal Mail, one of the largest privatizations in the country. This required comparisons to other sales such as British Airways and British Gas. The sales were aimed to create an 'equity culture' in the UK, a government thrust to make ordinary UK citizens be part of the corporate successes in the United Kingdom.
In continental Europe, it is more common for sales to include a retail portion. In Britain though, this was quite rare since the retail requirement was done away with back in 1993 for being too 'inflexible'.
According to Barclays Chairman of equity capital markets for Europe, Middle East and Africa, "I'm confident that of the big IPOs (initial public offerings) we see int he UK over the next few years, the vast majority will have a retail element. A lot of things have changed very very positively to make it easuer to do retail targeted transactions."
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