The International Property Securities Exchange (IPSX) has commenced the orderly wind down of its operations as it no longer has “sufficient financial resources to operate as a Recognised Investment Exchange in accordance with FCA regulatory capital requirements”.
The board of IPSX said it had taken the “regrettable decision” to close its IPSX Prime and IPSX Wholesale markets. A spokesperson for the business said it continued to have “positive conversations with a number of parties that are interested in either investing in, or acquiring, all or part of IPSX UK/IPSX Group, and benefiting from both the platform’s IP and considerable technical expertise that has gone into creating a new regulator-approved stock exchange”.
The spokesperson said the business had sufficient cash to support its operations for the foreseeable future and the current IPSX team would remain in place until the wind down process was complete.
“The IPSX concept remains a compelling proposition for both owners and investors in this historically defensive, low-correlation asset class,” added the spokesperson. “This is evidenced by the issuer pipeline this year being the strongest ever, the record number of early look presentations undertaken with prospective issuers and the 12-month outperformance of the current issuers vs the FTSE350 REIT index.
“This has been achieved against an equity capital market backdrop that has seen activity levels plunge since the interest cycle turned in 2022, which, coupled with war in Europe, has had a profound impact on real estate sector sentiment and activity, and resulted in an unprecedented decline in UK commercial real estate capital values. This perfect storm of macro headwinds has forced institutional investors to employ a risk-off approach, directly impacting our ability to close transactions for new issuers, and meaning we have been unable to scale the platform at a rate which would have avoided this scenario.”
