Yes, all of our standards are enforceable, that’s part of the responsibility of being an SRO. When a company makes promises as part of listing on LTSE, the public can believe them
Everything we do is completely transparent. If a company deliberately violates the policies they have publicly adopted, not only would they be delisted they would likely be committing securities fraud. I think it's likely you'd hear about it.
You imply rather than state directly that you fear our regulatory decisions would be influenced by our commercial interests, so just to address that part, we have an extensive set of checks and balances in our own corporate structure that double-buffer these decisions.
Thank you. I thought I was being direct but I’ll try to be more so.
Just to be clear, I don’t doubt you personally in any way, it’s more that I think it’s an enormously difficult problem to get a group of people to take action on something when they will receive a lot of money by NOT taking that action.
More specifically: companies are already supposed to take the wishes of long-term shareholders into account, and boards are supposed to enforce this, yet in practice this doesn’t happen much because, well, incentives dictate otherwise.
Can you share some of the checks and balances that would stop the exchange itself acting in its controllers own short-term self-interest?
What happens to the shares of a company that someone buys on this exchange if it is delisted? Do they have to then somehow sell them on another exchange? Wouldn't delisting harm the value of those shares, if they can be sold elsewhere? Wouldn't that cause serious financial harm to holders of those shares, who bought things on the LTSE expecting long term viability?
I think part of the idea is between reporting requirements & articulated statements about what goes into that reporting, by failing to report or failing to live up to those goals, you get to use the existing teeth (and defenses) associated with investment fraud. For any constructable issue rather than just purely quarterly financials, you can hold the company to account, and protect decisions that might be for some new goal in their bylaws [but also might appear against an immediate short-term financial gain].
My insight from watching Eric give a talk about the exchange:
I've heard many a company say one thing and act another. How will this be different? Will delisting be the repercussion of short termism?