HE WENT to an ordinary state school in the northern industrial town of Barrow before becoming successively a Treasury mandarin, a private secretary to two prime ministers and CEO of the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG). All of this was accomplished before the age of 40. No wonder that Nikhil Rathi, a serial shatterer of glass ceilings, has also been dubbed a wunderkind.
The son of a doctor, and an Oxford graduate, his modest demeanour can at times belie his brilliance and relative youth.
Though the huge responsibility of running the LSEG means he must now reside in London, his heart, it seems, remains attached to his home town in Cumbria: “Barrow is definitely where I feel most at home. It’s where we moved when I was very young. We had no other family and there are so many people in Barrow whom we can genuinely call family now, whom I'm very attached to, and the wonderful thing about Barrow is how warm and open people are.”
Appointed as LSEG boss in 2015 at the tender age of 36, under his leadership London has continued to be the premier global market for both domestic and international companies who remain attracted to its unrivalled international investor base and deep pool of liquidity when raising capital to grow their businesses.
Last year alone more than 600 firms raised a total of £37billion in the City while Frankfurt, London's main Continental rival, raised just £25.9billion. Moreover in the past 18 months, record numbers of tech firms have floated in the City, while there were also 21 floats by foreign businesses last year.
Gratifying as such statistics are, the question Rathi is probably asked most these days is whether the City’s pre-eminence as Europe’s busiest stock market will continue after Brexit, and, in particular, after a possible no deal.
His response tends to be positive yet measured, talking up London’s undoubted growth since the referendum as well as its ‘long term’ prospects as a trading centre, stressing the positive without any hint of gratuitous overkill.
Pointing out that last year the London Stock Exchange listed over three times more international companies than any other European exchange, he says: ‘Despite global macro-economic uncertainty, London remains underpinned by a strong track record of innovation and an international outlook.
“More capital was raised through investors returning to market after initial listing than on any other European exchange, highlighting long-term confidence. London has always been a leading international market.”
If he sounds like a politician, it’s probably not unrelated to his experience of working at the UK Treasury for 11 years. During that time he held a number of top jobs including being the youngest ever director of the financial services group representing the UK government's financial services interests in the EU and internationally.
Prior to that, he was Head of the Financial Stability unit during the financial crisis. He also served successively as Private Secretary to prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
So what does he think lies behind the City’s global appeal as a financial centre? “London is complemented by an enduring ability to be at the forefront of financial innovation, whether it be financing the building of the US railways in the 19th century, global oil and gas exploration in the 20th or the global shift to a low carbon economy today.”
