General election dynamics aside, it's been another important week for the City's mid-cap brokers. On Monday, Panmure Liberum, created from the merger of Panmure Gordon and Liberum, was officially born.

Already, executives have embarked on an integration plan entailing dozens of job cuts across the firm.

They aren't the only redundancies taking place in the sector, though. I hear that in recent days Deutsche Numis has let a number of senior brokers go, with about half of them from the Numis business acquired by Deutsche Bank last year.

With equity markets activity only in the foothills of a recovery, and the ranks of brokers' listed clients thinning as a result of delistings and takeovers, this wave of rightsizing is inevitable.

Steven Fine, Peel Hunt's chief executive, spoke recently of "a tentative recovery" in

IPO activity, part of which has been fuelled by the successful stock market debut of Raspberry Pi (on which the bank worked).

That's probably a fair summary, although - putting online fashion giant Shein to one side - London's IPO pipeline is not exactly bursting with attractive growth companies. Changing that will take substantial shifts in the way equity investors allocate capital.

Don't hold your breath.

(c) 2024 City A.M., source Newspaper