Two City veterans are pitching a new growth market to fill the UK listings gap.
Jon Prideaux, formerly chief executive of Boku, and Martin Graham, the ex-head of AIM, are seeking about £4 million to build the Global Growth Market (GGM), a venue pitched as a “mini-Nasdaq” for venture capital-backed businesses, according Sky News.
The raise would fund a trading platform and the process of securing authorisation from the Financial Conduct Authority.
GGM’s proposition targets late-stage private companies that have struggled to tap public investors.
Instead of traditional fund structures, the market would forgo management fees and carried interest in return for providing around half of the capital needs of qualifying issuers, a tweak designed to draw venture money into quoted equities.
A marketing document sent to prospective backers points to more than 30,000 late-stage venture companies, worth roughly $4 trillion, stuck in private portfolios without easy routes to raise, exit or obtain employee liquidity.
The initiative follows an abandoned attempt by Prideaux and Graham to take over AIM’s operation from the London Stock Exchange Group PLC (LSE:LSEG).
London also has the Aquis Exchange PLC (AIM:AQX), which provides a primary and secondary market for equity and debt securities, several of which have moved up to the AIM or the LSE main market.