Capital Markets in 2025: The Future of Equity Capital Markets

Overview

Welcome to Capital Markets in 2025, a special report focusing on the changing dynamics in global Initial Public Offering (IPO) activity.

Over the past 10 years, there has been a significant increase in cross-border capital market transactions, in particular IPOs. Indeed, the growth of the emerging economies has and will continue to have an impact on the global landscape of capital market transactions. Also, high-profile listings by Prada and L'Occitane have drawn a lot of attention, acting as testimonies to the perceived rise of the East.

As this report explores, companies from all over the world looking to go public will have more choice than ever before. In the emerging countries, it is apparent that while development of deep domestic capital pools and appropriate local regulatory infrastructure will take time, in the short to medium term, firms will continue accessing capital abroad, predominantly in the three global financial centres of New York, London and Hong Kong. Asia is, however, expected to become an increasingly attractive source of capital for them, effectively challenging developed marketplaces.

In addition, as the capital markets and stock exchanges in the developing economies become more sophisticated, companies from the West will be increasingly looking to these markets, with a view to tap into their growing wealth and the associated profile a listing may provide. Equally, the more traditional capital demand drivers, including private equity exits, deleveraging and spin-offs by diversified multinationals will continue generating cross-border capital market opportunities.

Where will the leading listing venues be in the future? Where will newly listed companies come from and what will they be looking for? What are the drivers of change in the IPO landscape? These are some of the questions asked in this report.