Companies in the UK and Europe have suffered from declining liquidity in the past few years and executives are thinking about listing in the US rather than here because among other things, share liquidity and valuations for companies are higher there than they are on this side of the Atlantic. But I would say: not so fast. Trying to improve stock valuations by moving to a more liquid market may not be the best lever to pull. Instead, I suggest a different one.
better governance makes a company's shares more investible. That's clear enough. But within the boundries of a short search, I couldn't find a clear ranking of European companies according to their ISS Board Quality scores.
Am I missing something? If not: is this a flaw, or feature of the European investing environment?
It's not a flaw. The ISS Quality Scores are a commercial product, so you have to pay to get access. Hence, you won't find the list on a public website.
so, the motto might be: companies need better governance to get better access to liquidity -- and information about better governance needs to be made public.
We, the investable community, have been slowly but surely improving the G for years if not decades now. Liquidity has decreased geometrically over time.
There will be outliers and they will flame and burn - but that's another story.
Liquidity, in the UK at least, has other drivers; writing more ESG drivel won't meaningfully impact that. FWIW I was involved as an investor in an IPO on the LSE in 2003. The Prospectus was 90 pages long. My last Annual Report was 243 pages long. The former was sold at 8x IPO price, the latter was taken private at a very significant premium to it's listed price, but still just about lifted it's head above water.
It's not causation, but liquidity and ESG aren't either
better governance makes a company's shares more investible. That's clear enough. But within the boundries of a short search, I couldn't find a clear ranking of European companies according to their ISS Board Quality scores.
Am I missing something? If not: is this a flaw, or feature of the European investing environment?
It's not a flaw. The ISS Quality Scores are a commercial product, so you have to pay to get access. Hence, you won't find the list on a public website.
so, the motto might be: companies need better governance to get better access to liquidity -- and information about better governance needs to be made public.
We, the investable community, have been slowly but surely improving the G for years if not decades now. Liquidity has decreased geometrically over time.
There will be outliers and they will flame and burn - but that's another story.
Liquidity, in the UK at least, has other drivers; writing more ESG drivel won't meaningfully impact that. FWIW I was involved as an investor in an IPO on the LSE in 2003. The Prospectus was 90 pages long. My last Annual Report was 243 pages long. The former was sold at 8x IPO price, the latter was taken private at a very significant premium to it's listed price, but still just about lifted it's head above water.
It's not causation, but liquidity and ESG aren't either