The UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) will intensify efforts to revive London's public stock markets by creating a single stream of share-trading data. The regulator plans to award a tender next year for a UK equity consolidated tape combining pre-trade and post-trade data from the London Stock Exchange (LSE), dark pools, and other venues. From Friday, the FCA will publish its Market Activity Reporter for Shares on its website, showing total trading value in UK-listed shares to address what it calls a major under-reporting of liquidity.

Simon Walls, the FCA's director of markets, said the moves would "unambiguously be on the positive side of the scales" because they increase data access and attract new users. He noted London's true market depth is three times bigger than the main XLON figure published by Bloomberg, as current data excludes periodic auctions and dark pool trades.

The FCA aims to launch the consolidated tape within 18 months via a five-year contract, lagging behind the EU's Euro CT P and US schemes dating to the 1970s. The LSE warned the changes could drive trading to opaque venues, while banks resisted disclosing off-exchange trades. The FCA will consult on revenue sharing with data providers and include data from systematic internalisers — bank-operated off-exchange venues — despite earlier opposition. It also plans to reduce reported liquidity from banks by ending some administrative trade reporting and set expectations for platform outage preparedness.