FCA's New Pop Regime, SpaceX IPO, and Future of UK IPOs
Citation
Steve Johnson, 'SpaceX "Lays Groundwork" to Attract Retail Investors to IPOs' FT Weekend (London, 11–12 July 2026) Money 2.
Summary
SpaceX's recent IPO through the new Pop regime instituted by the FCA in Jan 2026 has marked the start of substantial interest from UK, US, and European IPOs looking to 'tap into UK retail demand' [Steve Johnson].
Tim Jacobson, Head of Primary Markets at Hargreaves Lansdown:
'We're expecting a strong pipeline of UK, US and European IPs coming over the next 12 months'
Joe Winkley, Head of Corporate Services at Winterflood Securities (which managed SpaceX's Pop platform):
'The successful UK retail offer for SpaceX laid the groundwork for further US offering to be made available to UK investors'
'We are seeing interest not only from US issuers but from potential large European issuers as well'
Perspective
Interesting stuff.
It means that the lowering of the bureaucratic red-tape through the establishment of the Pop platform has meaningfully decreased the administrative hurdle enough for foreign firms (as well as domestic) to IPO here.
As a result, as higher numbers of large domestic and foreign corporations – particularly those that have grown substantially and speedily through the AI boom and larger digital-first world (i.e., Anthropic, OpenAI, Monzo, Revolut, Stripe, etc.) – look to IPO [Hargreaves Lansdown, New Issues page], for law firms this may be a lucrative boom for advisory work and would lead to higher revenues as long as they can navigate emerging legislation for AI alongside the very new and largely untested Pop regime.