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London Stock Exchange reportedly accelerates 24-hour trading plan
CGTN Europe
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yesterday
CGTN Europe spoke to Justin Urquhart-Stewart, Investment manager and business commentator.
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00:00
Shares in UK-listed companies could soon be traded 24 hours a day.
00:05
The London Stock Exchange is reportedly accelerating a plan for round-the-clock trading
00:10
to boost the appeal of the UK market and attract younger investors.
00:15
Well, Justin Urquhart-Stewart is an investment manager and business commentator,
00:19
and he joins us now live in the studio. Justin, thank you very much for coming in.
00:22
My pleasure. I'm a very young investor, I'm afraid.
00:25
None of us are very young on this show.
00:26
Now, it's worth saying, isn't it, that the LSE Group hasn't confirmed these reports?
00:31
No, no, no.
00:32
But 24-hour trading, is this the way you think we should be going?
00:36
No, it's going to happen anyway.
00:37
And frankly, London should have been doing it before,
00:39
because when London was the most international market in the world,
00:42
not to say that it was the largest at all,
00:44
but it had many more different countries actually operating through London,
00:49
it could, in effect, operate 24 hours a day if they decided to automate themselves.
00:53
They did go through Big Bang, which meant they didn't have us back in 1986,
00:56
they didn't have to have a trading floor anymore.
01:00
The Americans quite correctly actually identified they had the trading floor in Wall Street,
01:04
but that's theatre.
01:05
That's made it look like the stock market.
01:08
You don't expect silly Gits and red braces merely for show.
01:12
What you actually need, actually, is decent technology allowing you to trade.
01:16
And of course, actually, you look at Bitcoin, or the cryptos, and currencies,
01:20
they can all trade 24 hours if you want to.
01:22
And bear in mind, most trading doesn't involve humans anymore.
01:26
We're now dealing with automated, automated trades.
01:28
So if London don't do it, they should be left out.
01:30
What London needs to do is, what future does it have?
01:33
Because currently, its owner, only about 15% of its revenue comes from trading equities.
01:38
The rest, it's all about data.
01:40
So what I'd love to see is London actually linking together with ASEAN nations,
01:44
but also with Beijing as well.
01:46
Hong Kong and Shanghai link those markets, and you'll have much more demand,
01:49
a greater depth of liquidity, and much more international trading.
01:52
And that will actually then fulfill the prime purpose of the stock exchange,
01:56
which is to raise capital to grow businesses anywhere around the world.
02:00
Make that simpler and cheaply and run it effectively.
02:03
There's your future.
02:04
We're going to talk about AstraZeneca in a moment,
02:07
but the CEO recently suggested that this UK company should actually move off
02:13
the London stock exchange, and he's not the first one.
02:15
We've seen a lot of delisting.
02:17
What is going wrong?
02:18
Well, what's happened is, you've actually seen companies looking at London exchange
02:21
and saying, well, if my business is actually not all in London, do I need to be here?
02:24
And it's not necessarily the cheapest market in the world.
02:27
It's not the most liquid, deep market in the world.
02:29
And since Brexit hasn't had necessarily the pull of your seeing throughout the rest of Europe,
02:34
so London hasn't really found its new position.
02:37
What should it be trying to do?
02:38
And therefore, what it should be trying to do is actually market itself to businesses,
02:43
probably slightly smaller scale businesses,
02:45
very to attract those in internationally.
02:47
Those who don't want to be in America.
02:48
Why don't they want to be in America?
02:50
Well, prior to Trump and regulatory issues and tariffs and things like that,
02:53
they don't want all the regulation that goes with American operations,
02:56
whereas London will be much a lighter touch to it.
02:59
It's still regulated, but a lighter touch.
03:00
But when you go to America, you have to have very strict rules,
03:03
and the Russians found this because they found they want to try and float some of their companies in America,
03:07
whereupon there were threats that some of their directors would go straight to prison.
03:10
So you've got to be careful.
03:12
Now, AstraZeneca, as you were talking about there,
03:14
it's invested $50 million into a US operation, hasn't it?
03:19
Yeah.
03:19
President Trump this morning must be waking up in America extremely pleased by that,
03:24
because he's been saying all along that's the purpose of tariffs.
03:27
The purpose is to get overseas companies to invest in America,
03:30
to move their operations to America.
03:32
So he must be very pleased.
03:34
A sign that tariffs are working, David?
03:37
Well, the trouble is he's a rather strange character,
03:41
because he's looking at one end of a tariff.
03:42
It's all very well actually saying, well, what a tariff of goods coming in.
03:44
What do the competition do?
03:46
What do the other countries do?
03:47
And the answer is, well, they'll react the same.
03:49
Tariffs can actually, you don't know, not be a break on an economy.
03:53
Mind you, it can also break an economy.
03:55
And so you've actually got to make sure it's the right level.
03:57
So the issue he's forced countries to do is to, let's do a deal.
04:00
You know, I always love to think he's a great deal maker.
04:02
Questionable.
04:03
But nonetheless, that's his own brand.
04:06
And so people like Britain have gone along sometimes,
04:10
sort of kowtowing in many ways towards him,
04:12
say, please, can we do a deal?
04:14
And others not.
04:15
What it has done with, let's say, operations like NATO and other areas,
04:20
where people have lived off the support of the American economy
04:22
and the American budgets,
04:24
now actually say, well, you're going to have to look after yourselves now.
04:27
And so Europe's going to have to spend much more time now saying,
04:29
right, we've got to operate independently.
04:31
We're still allies.
04:32
We've still got our own world.
04:32
We're still trade.
04:33
But actually, the imbalances have to change.
04:35
And I've been a great critic of Trump.
04:37
But actually, in some of these areas, he's not wrong.
04:40
The problem that he hasn't worked out is,
04:41
tariff charges one way will come back and hit you the other way.
04:45
But he hasn't had that week yet.
04:46
We are days away from the latest Trump deadline, 1st of August.
04:51
He says there's no extension after this.
04:53
What is the mood on the markets with business, with investors at the moment?
04:57
What they'll think is, the fact he says it's two weeks,
05:00
a bit like stopping a war with 24 hours.
05:02
These dates are fairly fungible.
05:05
And so basically what the markets have actually quite liked
05:07
is whatever they think of the individual concern,
05:10
he's actually been making the economy much more dynamic.
05:13
And what he's done is actually broken some of the complacency,
05:16
which we've had since, well, frankly, the end of the Second World War,
05:19
to actually have, not to say a new order,
05:21
but a new dynamic to actually say that actually how you grow businesses internationally
05:25
should not be the same as before,
05:27
and America is not going to be supporting you,
05:29
particularly Europe and other areas.
05:31
But, you know, remember, we're in a low, slower world of growth.
05:35
Remember, the one thing we should hang on to,
05:36
which is actually vital for both China and America,
05:39
is they need each other.
05:40
They're in a symbiotic relationship with each other.
05:42
Who's the largest trading partner for China?
05:45
America.
05:46
Who's the largest owner of American debt most of the time?
05:48
It's China.
05:49
So they may mold each other, but they need each other,
05:52
and they'll do a deal.
05:54
Yeah, it was interesting what Scott Besson has just been saying,
05:56
that they're in a good place, the two countries,
05:58
so we await further developments.
06:00
Thank you so much for your time.
06:01
Justin Urquhart-Stewart, business investor and commentator.
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