From Toronto to London: Sequencing a Smart Dual-Listing

Over the past few months we’ve laid out a simple argument: tariffs and FX shocks have nudged many Canadian operators to treat the UK as a practical beachhead into Europe. If your commercial footprint is now tilting that way, customers, suppliers, lenders, then the capital-markets question naturally follows: should you add a London line? The answer isn’t a slogan; it’s sequencing. A UK quotation can widen your buyer set, align currency with how customers and analysts model you, and create paper that works locally for M&A, if the business already resonates in the UK.

London has made that decision easier to execute. Last year, the UK moved to a simpler, disclosure-led listing regime, merging its old “premium” and “standard” segments into a single category and lowering procedural friction for credible growth companies. The intent is competitiveness, not looseness: fewer prescriptive hurdles up front, more onus on ongoing disclosure and governance.

Index math remains its own gate. If your long-term plan includes FTSE index eligibility, remember the free-float thresholds: 10% for UK-incorporated issuers and 25% for non-UK. You can list in London with less, but index rules are independent, and your potential buyer set (especially UK index and tracker money) is shaped by them. Plan your register before your roadshow.

Venue choice should follow your next 12–18 months, not a vanity badge. The Main Market is where you go when scale and, eventually, index inclusion are part of the brief. AIM is London’s growth market, designed for smaller, growing companies; it trades regulatory rigidity for a different kind of discipline: you must retain a nominated adviser (a “NOMAD”), which is a corporate-finance firm approved by the Exchange to assess whether you’re appropriate for AIM at admission and to advise you on compliance day-to-day thereafter. In plain English, the NOMAD is your rulebook sherpa and sounding board from draft to disclosure, and you keep them throughout your life on AIM.

There’s also AQSE (Aquis Stock Exchange), a growth venue with two segments, Access for earlier-stage issuers and Apex for more established SMEs. A practical feature for founders: AQSE commonly works with a minimum free float around 10%, which helps you retain control while you build a UK audience and trading density. For issuers that need a UK quote and currency quickly (e.g., to paper local partnerships or tuck-ins) but aren’t chasing FTSE index money yet, AQSE can be a sensible on-ramp.

So which Canadian companies actually benefit from a dual-listing in the UK? Start with relevance. If you can see UK/EU revenue rising toward, say, the high-teens or better within the next 12–18 months, or if key inputs, distributors, or lenders are UK-centric, London adds signal for the buyers who already follow your space. Export-oriented industrials and agri-food groups selling into UK grocers or builders’ merchants; energy-transition and critical-materials suppliers with UK customers or offtakes; med-techs running trials with UK sites or interacting with NICE; specialty finance platforms writing GBP assets; and branded CPG with UK retail listings are all credible candidates. If the “UK story” is still hypothetical, adding a second line fragments trading without lowering your cost of capital. (We’d rather see you turn a pilot into contracted revenue first, then amplify it.)

Stage and size matter as well, but as heuristics, not rules. In our experience, the sweet spot includes issuers that (i) can support 10–25% free float without destabilizing control, (ii) can name the specific UK funds, by mandate, that can buy them on day one, and (iii) have at least one UK broker willing to publish research and make a market. Market-cap ranges vary by sector, but think upper-SME to mid-cap where incremental UK coverage moves the needle: a Canadian issuer at, say, C$100 million or larger with visible GBP revenue or assets often fits this bill. Smaller stories can work on AIM or AQSE if the operating cadence is tight and the NOMAD/broker bench is strong; larger caps usually orient to the Main Market and keep FTSE eligibility in scope as they scale.

If the profile fits, the sequencing is straightforward. Map the 20–30 UK funds whose mandates and size match your story and line up the proof points you’ll publish over the next two quarters (GBP mix, UK cohort margins, contracted backlog). Decide where you want to sit, Main Market for scale and index path; AIM if you want the intensity of a NOMAD relationship and staged credibility; AQSE if speed, control, and local currency are your first priorities. Underwrite liquidity architecture (two brokers with clear roles, modest market-making, a pre-committed corporate-access cadence) and align calendars so TSX/TSXV and London reinforce, not cannibalize, each other. Then announce with a UK-relevant proof point, contract, JV, or facility, so trading starts with substance rather than ceremony.

The flip side is equally clear. If UK/EU revenue is still a deck slide, if your only source of free float is to pry stock out of friendly hands, or if your liquidity plan is “the market will find us,” press pause. London is not a badge; it’s a tool. Use it when it compounds a strategy that’s already working.

Abingdon’s role is to connect your operating traction to the right London outcome. We’ll build the investor map, pick venue and brokers, structure free float with index eligibility in mind, and tune disclosure so both markets read the same story in their own currency. If you want to go deeper, we can turn this into a short “London readiness” scorecard you can share with your board, buyers identified, research lined up, float planned, liquidity supported, and we’ll keep it honest quarter by quarter.