PISCES

PISCES — the Private Intermittent Securities and Capital Exchange System — completed its first live trading events in March 2026. JP Jenkins ran a window from 18-24 March; the London Stock Exchange's Private Securities Market also completed its inaugural trading event. Both platforms were approved by the FCA under its sandbox regime, which runs until 2030, allowing the regulator to refine the rules before deciding whether to make PISCES permanent or permanent-with-changes.

PISCES was developed jointly by HM Treasury, the FCA, and the London Stock Exchange. It creates a regulated secondary market for shares in UK and overseas private companies — enabling existing shareholders (employees, angels, early VCs) to sell stakes to institutional investors without the company being listed on a public exchange. The LSE's Private Securities Market runs as a single-day auction, concentrating liquidity at a single clearing point suited to large institutional block trades. JP Jenkins offers greater flexibility, including continuous trading windows of up to five consecutive business days per month, suited to smaller or more frequent transactions. Both platforms restrict buyers to specified categories of institutional investors — retail participation is not permitted under the sandbox rules.

PISCES addresses a long-standing friction in the UK startup ecosystem: the lack of secondary liquidity for pre-IPO shares traps employee equity for years and makes it harder for UK companies to compete for talent against US peers with more liquid stock programmes. By enabling intermittent secondary trading, PISCES also gives investors partial exits without forcing a company to list on a public market before it is ready — reducing pressure for premature IPOs and potentially keeping more high-growth companies UK-headquartered for longer.