India offering to explore direct listing of its businesses on the London Stock Exchange: U.K. Chancellor Hunt

India and U.K. agree to explore direct listing of Indian businesses on LSE, develop GIFT City as reinsurance hub, and launch U.K.-India Infrastructure Financing Bridge to harness collective expertise in infrastructure projects. Pensions and insurance industry keen to invest in India, with plans for visits and knowledge-sharing on reforms

India has offered to explore direct listing of its businesses on the London Stock Exchange (LSE), while the pension and insurance industry in Britain is keen to ramp investments into Indian, the United Kingdom (UK) Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said on Monday.

Speaking after the 12th India-UK Economic and Financial Dialogue steered by him and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Mr. Hunt said he was “particularly pleased with the first confirmation by India that it will explore the LSE as an international destination for the direct listing of Indian companies.”

Ms. Sitharaman signalled that India’s first priority was to commencing listing of firms at the international financial services centre (IFSC), GIFT City. “Once that is done, we may look at moving further and that’s what the Chancellor was saying, ‘Soon after that, for Indian businesses to consider listing in London’,” the Minister noted.

The U.K. and India have agreed to deepen their partnership in developing GIFT City, with the joint statement noting that U.K.’s expertise will be tapped to help further its status as a reinsurance hub, and emphasising the scope to increase reinsurance trade between the two markets.

The two sides also discussed the contours of a bilateral investment treaty that is being discussed along with a comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (FTA) for goods and services. “The intention on both sides is to expedite the discussion so that some quick agreements can lead to finally signing [of] the FTA,” Ms. Sitharaman said.

Terming India “one of the most exciting places anywhere in the world that investors wish to consider”, Chancellor Hunt pointed out that though London is the second largest global financial centre, a “majority of our asset managers don’t invest in India”.

“So there’s a huge opportunity, we are looking at changes to the way our pensions and insurance funds are regulated, because there’s a very strong desire on their part to invest more in productive assets. And, we have huge pools of capital ready to be harnessed,” he underlined.