t’s High Time There Was A Tech IPO Market In London – Let’s Do This.

The recent results of Zygna, Groupon, and even the mighty Facebook on the public markets in the U.S. have served to highlight a couple of major issues for European startups. One is a little jealously: there remain few viable IPO markets in Europe for tech stocks, hence why you see so many moving to the US – usually NASDAQ – when they get big, as happened with Yandex and Qlik Technologies. The second is annoyance: many solid European tech companies are now at a point where they have solid, revenue generating businesses, built on a lot more than hype and user numbers alone. And in the last year we’ve seen these companies start to look for ways to break-out.

For example, there are rumours that both the incredibly successful Wonga and King.com are considering floating on New York’s NASDAQ exchange, while Mind Candy is also alleged to be considering a float for its Moshi Monsters game.

And the latest symptom of this is another rallying cry by entrepreneurs and VCs for a tech IPO market in London, the natural home for European startups to float in a global setting. Over the weekend the Index Ventures VC lit the touch-paper on a debate many in the ecosystem have been champing at the bit to have and one we’ll be tracking over the next few months and years no doubt. For we are acutely aware that a healthy tech sector requires funding at ALL stages, and with no European IPO market, startups in Europe will remain starved of capital in the long run.

Written by the highly respected and veteran investor and Index Ventures partner Robin Klein, the post points out both the “centrality of the Tech sector to economic growth” during the downturn, while at the same time the huge growth in its size over the last few years.

Index notes the “steady transformation” of real estate tenants in London’s business districts towards technology companies such as Bloomberg, Skype, Amazon, Expedia, and newer ones such as Moo.com, Moshi Monsters, Huddle and others. Some companies in the tech sector are seeing revenue growth of at least 30% per annum, and up to 100%.

However, says Index’s Klein, there “remains a disconnect between the economic vigor in the tech world and the dynamism of the City.” And there is the continuing problem that the “door to London’s IPO market is shut tight for tech companies” despite London’s place as a global financial centre

Further more, its just plain stupid. The UK’s Internet economy now accounts of over 8% of the country’s GDP, a higher figures than South Korea (7.3%), China (5.5%), Japan (4.7%) or the US (4.7%) according to the Economist Intelligence Unit and OECD.

And according to a recent BCG report online retail accounts for 13.5% of total UK retail sales, a higher percentage than in any other G20 country, while online advertising accounts for 28.9% of total advertising spend. By contrast, in Japan, only 21.6% of the advertising market is digital.

Original source here.