David Stringer-Lamarre, an alumnus of Liverpool University very much enjoyed attending this alumni event at the London Stock Exchange.

Xavier Rolet, the Chief Executive Officer of the London Stock Exchange, shared his view on a number of topics. These included the central importance of Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to the economic health of a country. He noted that there were 23 million SMEs in Europe and 5.4 million in the UK.

Relating to this Xavier Rolet spoke about the need to align the funding/lending system to the needs and requirements of start-ups and scale-ups. He noted that there was currently a bias towards bank lending/bank debt in preference to equity funding.

Image Xavier Rolet with David Stringer-Lamarre