25 June 2025
The UK's capital markets are entering uncharted waters with a new system for private companies. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has approved PISCES - the Private Intermittent Securities and Capital Exchange System - a new platform allowing private companies to trade their shares in a regulated environment.
It's a bold experiment aimed at closing the gap between private fundraising and public listings. While this could energise investment in the UK’s growth economy, it also opens the door to fresh regulatory and market risks.
For years, founders, employees, and early investors in private companies have faced a common problem: how to exit or cash out without waiting years for an IPO. PISCES is designed to change that.
By enabling occasional trading events on registered platforms, private companies can offer shareholders a way to sell stakes, while giving investors, especially institutions, access to high-growth firms still off the public radar. This is especially relevant in a UK market struggling with sluggish IPO activity.
If done well, PISCES could serve as a halfway house: giving companies exposure to market discipline and capital while delaying the demands of a full listing. For investors, it could also mean earlier access to promising assets, not just once they’ve already hit the public markets.
As you might have expected, there’s another side to the story. To make PISCES attractive, the FCA has allowed for a lighter-touch regime. Companies can control who buys their shares and won’t need to name shareholders with less than 25% ownership. Forecasts and detailed ESG disclosures will be optional, and even insider trading rules will be more relaxed than those on the primary market.
That flexibility will appeal to firms worried about the burdens of a public listing. Yet it raises tough questions. Are investors getting enough information to make sound decisions? Could selective trading windows and opaque ownership structures create room for mispricing or manipulation?
Striking the right balance between innovation and integrity will be key. Otherwise, the very transparency gap that public markets were built to solve might reappear in a new, shinier package.
PISCES was pitched as a way to strengthen, not weaken, the pipeline of future public listings. But some market veterans are sceptical. Why float if companies can raise money and offer shareholder exits without going public?
There’s also the question of volume because, without sufficient trading activity, prices may be volatile or unreliable. Investors might be wary of committing capital to a venue that doesn’t offer consistent liquidity. Also, if the most promising companies stay private indefinitely, public markets risk becoming a place only for mature or distressed firms - hardly the growth engine policymakers envision.
If PISCES is framed as a bridge rather than an endpoint, it could give companies valuable market exposure before stepping into the full glare of a listing. It could be a welcome compromise for founders keen to retain control while unlocking capital.
Ultimately, PISCES is a controlled experiment, running under a sandbox framework until 2030. That means the rules can evolve, the participants will be closely monitored, and lessons can be learned in real time. If it works, it could reshape how private capital flows in the UK, encouraging innovation, improving liquidity, and drawing new investors into the fold.
But if it becomes a haven for low-transparency, low-accountability trading, the consequences could ripple far beyond the companies that use it.
As with any innovation in financial infrastructure, the devil lies in the details and discipline. The idea is ambitious, and the execution will need to be meticulous. As the first trades open later this year, the rest of the market will be watching closely, not just to see whether PISCES floats but whether it charts a course worth following.
Back to News
+44 (0)20 7048 9400
Email Us
Client login
