LSE sees jump in new issues

But fragile state of the stock market is underlined by slight fall in the total number of listings across the LSE’s markets

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The London Stock Exchange (LSE) saw a big uptick in the number of new issues over the last year, although the total number of companies listed has fallen slightly, reflecting the still fragile state of the stock market.

In a pre-close trading update, the LSE reports that new issues are up 90 percent over the 11 months to February across its Main Market, the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) and Borsa Italiana.

AIM saw the biggest rise with new share offerings up from 40 to 90, an increase of 125 percent compared with the same period the year before. New issues on the Main Market climbed from 41 to 68, a 66 percent rise, while on Borsa Italiana new offerings rose from 7 to 9.

Despite these encouraging figures, however, the overall number of companies listed across the LSE’s markets fell by 3 percent.

The biggest contributor to this fall was AIM, which saw listings decline from 1,268 to 1,178, a fall of 7 percent. The number of companies on the Main Market and Borsa Italiana were roughly flat compared with a year ago.