Yahoo Finance Scrap trading tax or more will follow us to New York, warns Paddy Power owner
Ministers should scrap the tax on share trading to boost Britain’s ailing public markets, the boss of Paddy Power owner Flutter has said.
Peter Jackson, chief executive of Flutter, said removing the 0.5pc stamp duty on the purchase of shares could help restore growth to the stock market, which has been struggling with an exodus of companies amid concerns about poor liquidity and low valuations.
His comments come as Flutter prepares to shift its main listing from London to New York at the end of the month.
Mr Jackson said: “There’s a simple change which the Government could make which will be to abolish stamp duty on share trading, which I think would have a big impact on the volume of shares that are traded.”
The US, Germany and Australia do not charge a tax on share trading, while there is no stamp duty on trading the shares of companies worth less than €1bn (£860m) in Spain and France.
Mr Jackson suggested that scrapping the levy in Britain could boost liquidity, leading to a more vibrant market.
He said: “The more shares that are traded, if you’re an investor looking to take a position in the company, you’re more confident to take a bigger position because you need to get in and out without disturbing the share price.”
Mr Jackson is the latest City figure to call for stamp duty on share trading to be scrapped.
Mark Dixon, chief executive of shared workspace provider IWG, has called the tax an “impediment”, while brokers such as Peel Hunt and Interactive Investor have campaigned for it to be axed.
Flutter launched a secondary listing on the New York Stock Exchange in January and Mr Jackson said the company had “already seen a considerable uplift in the number of our shares that are traded daily as a result”.
The company will shift its main listing to New York at the end of the month in a further step away from London. The move will allow Flutter to pursue inclusion in American indices such as the S&P 500 and comes as the company increasingly focuses on the US.
Sports betting has exploded since a 2018 Supreme Court decision effectively ended a federal ban on gambling.
Flutter owns the sports betting brand FanDuel in the US and the country is now its biggest market globally.
Sales in the US grew by 32pc to $1.4bn (£1.1bn) in the three months to March 31, far outpacing the size of its UK and Irish business. That division saw a more modest 17pc rise in sales to $861m.
Flutter lost $177m in the first three months of the year, which it blamed on non-cash charges.
Mr Jackson called New York the company’s “natural home”. Flutter has established operational headquarters in the city ahead of the change to its primary listing at the end of the month.
Rising sales in the US helped Flutter increase its global revenues by 24pc last year to $11.8bn, although the company made a statutory net loss of $1.2bn because of impairments linked to its PokerStars franchise and other accounting charges.
