IR Monitor – 08 October 2025

In this week’s newsletter:

•  London drops out of top 20 IPO markets after falling behind Mexico and Oman
• Tomorrow’s Business with the case against the corporate podcast
• Activist investors had busiest quarter ever, launching 61 campaigns reports Reuters. With no sign of a summer lull, Elliott alone launched nine campaigns
• Let the market decide how often companies report: this is the opinion of Paul Atkins, Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, writing in the Financial Times
• A good idea: Co-CEOs? Harvard Business says yes, Reuters says no
• And finally … Is Artificial Intelligence bringing the press release back? PR Week on “one of the most unlikely side effects of the AI revolution”

This week’s news

London drops out of top 20 IPO markets after falling behind Mexico

News of London’s decline as a global IPO hub continued this week,  as the capital fell to a three-decade low of 23rd place in Bloomberg’s global ranking of IPO markets. It is reported that IPO volumes are down 69% year-on-year to just $248 million, meaning that London now trails markets such as Oman, Mexico and Singapore. Analysts attribute this fall to a combination of persistently low valuations, regulatory frictions and the lure of New York’s sizeable market and growing Middle Eastern destinations. Once behind  over half of Europe’s IPO activity, London’s share has now fallen to 3%, as companies increasingly choose other European destinations for listing. Private equity firms are capitalising on the valuation gap, taking undervalued listed firms private without bringing them back on, shrinking the UK’s public market even further. While the London Stock Exchange points to a modest pipeline of upcoming deals, challenges including stamp duty and limited domestic fund participation continue to suppress momentum. As rival markets gain ground, London’s policymakers face mounting pressure to restore confidence in the UK as a destination for taking companies public before its global relevance erodes further.  

The case against the podcast

LSE’s recent news of introducing podcasts as an IR medium has been met with some scepticism. Writing in Tomorrow’s Business, Simon English has made the case that there is still very much a role for traditional investor relations. English argues that not every business necessarily needs the “storytelling” narrative or gripping origin story podcasts often encourage. He suggests that there is a risk here of CEOs, founders or CFOs becoming engrossed in a story which is only interesting to them, creating headaches for investor relations or public relations teams who might have to make sure they run to time. He also argues that using podcasts to conduct investor relations could potentially cut the amount of information which makes its way to the market, preventing the opportunity for investor questions to be answered as companies point to their website or the latest episode of their podcast for all company related comments. The LSE’s podcast experiment could therefore mark both an opportunity for innovation and a test of whether accessibility can coexist with accountability.

Activist investors: busiest quarter ever

Activist investors have recorded their busiest quarter on record, launching 61 new campaigns globally in Q3 2025 according to Barclays data reported by Reuters. It has already been a busy year for activists, who launched 60 campaigns in Q2. This level of activism marks a dramatic rise from the 36 campaigns in 2024. Drivers behind the surge have included market volatility as a result of political uncertainty & shifting regulatory landscapes, which has created fresh openings for activists to establish toehold investments in companies and prepare to launch campaigns. So far this year, activists have initiated 191 campaigns targeting 178 companies, managing to capture 98 board seats. The campaigns have been dominated by leadership changes, while M&A is also being marked as a key objective. Elliott Management was among the most active, launching nine campaigns in the third quarter. The growing assertiveness of activists demonstrates how investor pressure is reshaping corporate governance across sectors. For IR teams, this level of activity signals a new era of heightened investor engagement and scrutiny. As activists increasingly demand operational efficiency and accountability, companies are under greater pressure to demonstrate value creation and align strategy with investor expectations heading into 2026.

Let the market decide how often companies report – the SEC

In this week’s installation of the quarterly reporting debate Paul Atkins, chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) wrote an op-ed in the Financial Times. In it, he urges a return to the SEC’s central mandate of protecting investors, ensuring fair markets, and enabling capital formation, rather than pursing politically motivated policies. Key to his op-ed is the desire for the SEC to uphold the principle of materiality – companies should disclose only necessary information relevant to an investor’s decision-making – at its core when considering potential reforms to quarterly reporting standards. Atkins criticises “double materiality” across Europe, which mandate the disclosure of matters which hold social importance but are financially immaterial, warning of additional costs to the investor and the customer, clouding investment decisions. Atkins encourages the SEC to allow the market to dictate a reporting frequency that is optimal for the individual firm, favouring both companies and investors over strict regulatory reporting directives.

A good idea: Co-CEOs?

The demands of a modern business seem to be increasingly outgrowing the capacity of the individual, with the rise of co-CEO structures posing a potential solution for firms with their hands full. Harvard Business Review sets out the case for prosperous co-CEO firms, which some studies suggest have outperformed their single-CEO peers, offering diversified and complementary expertise, stronger decision making, and organisational resilience in the face of dynamic business landscapes such as the digital transformation, global complexity, and rapid innovation. Reuters makes a more negative case but nonetheless reports the most recent additions to the growing list of high-profile firms adopting co-CEOs, with Oracle, Comcast, and Spotify expanding their c-suite capacities. However, the risks of such structures are also evident. Harvard Business stresses the need for co-CEOs to adopt roles which are clearly divided in practice, but remain aligned in company direction and messaging to avoid the possibility of unclear authority, stakeholder confusion, or internal fragmentation.

And finally… is Artificial Intelligence bringing the press release back?

Once declared obsolete, the press release is enjoying an unlikely resurgence thanks to AI, writes Steve Barrett of US PR Week. Public companies have flirted before with not bothering to release their reports on reputable wire services, he suggests. But a few high profile gaffes (when information was accidentally released early, for example) were enough to drive IR teams back to the tried and tested format of the wire service. A more recent survey outlines the top sources of information for frequently used large language models such as ChatGPT and Perplexity; Reddit comprises 40.1% of citations, followed by Wikipedia, YouTube and Google being citied at least 23.3% of the time. This makes traditional newswires an important tool to get the company’s messaging out. Platforms like PR Newswire and GlobeNewswire are now positioning releases as “AI visibility engines,” providing enduring backlinks and credible data for generative tools.