Newspapers are excitedly noting this morning that the Chinese managed online fashion group Shein is expected to file a prospectus for a London Stock Exchange listing very soon.
I am not excited.
Shein sells very large quantities of clothing that it knows are unlikely to be worn more than a few times, at most. They are intended to arrive in a waste tip sometime very soon after their original purchase.
Garments that are returned to them are apparently routinely binned and not recycled.
This is a company that has set out to abuse the planet.
There are also questions about its tax affairs. It seems to undertake a lot of activity in feeeports.
I know there have been questions about its employment practices.
So, why are so many celebrating this company choosing to have its shares listed in London?
It is very hard to reconcile this choice by the London Stock Exchange with any form of business ethics.
The most basic question is, do they care?
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Companies are under no obligation to be ethical, unless it is a statutory legal requirement.
Why do we have regulations? Because companies are under no obligation to be ethical.
This is how neoliberalism works: profits before people, profits before ethics.
The evidence for this is overwhelming.
Money to manage sewage? Nope, pay the money to shareholders and dump the sewage into rivers.
Healthy lunches for schoolchildren? Nope, junk food for lunch, and costly drugs to manage health.
Money for the less well-off? Nope, money via high interest rates to those who are already well-off.
I do not agree
Read s176 of the Companies Act 2006
I agree with Ian Tresman, you can have all the regulations in the world but if they are not enforced, what is the point? Our companies do act with impunity, they even get away with not filing accounts!
Yet there is no proper oversight or enforcement of much of the Companies Act, including the legal duties and responsibilities of Directors, and we have previously discussed, and agreed, the necessity of seriously beefing up Companies House, and ideally the Insolvency Agency, to ensure compliance, even with the fairly minimum standards set out in the 2006 Act. .
Impunity in the service of “shareholder value” is the everyday reality.
Thank you, Richard.
Having done some compliance consulting there in Q4 2021, I can answer no.
LSE is desperate. There’s more of that to come. Even the Foreign Office is mobilising to get listings for the LSE.
They will literally sell anything
Thank you, Richard.
I am a little perplexed by why this isn’t being put on the Chinese or HongKong stock exchanges – any idea?
I can only speculate that it’s the Usual Suspects that are hedging their bets in their Never Ending Quest for World Domination. Here :
‘S.L. Kanthan
@Kanthan2030
14h
Chinese fast-fashion giant Shein is planning for an IPO in London.
Valued at $66 billion, Shein will be the second largest IPO in the history of UK stock market.
Shein wanted to do a NY IPO, but anti-China hysteria sabotaged that.
But no worries, US companies like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are involved in the London IPO.’
So, while on the one hand the Collective West and its controlled politicians agitate against China on the other they kowtow. I also think this may have something to do with the recent summit that the worlds Bankers had with Xi.
You have no business messing with a private business operating entirely within the law, providing products and services that people are looking for.
Who made you the moral arbiter of what business should and shouldn’t do?
Who gave you the right to say I might not express an opinion?
Thank you, Jenny.
I doubt people who make such bold and offensive statements, as you have done, know anything about business, especially finance.
Declaration: I have worked in the City (and on Wall Street and further afield) for nearly 30 years and been a bankster lobbyist. I also have a tropical side hustle in farming and tourism.
Richard was pointing out that this company does not comply with employment law & deliberately tries to evade other requirements.
Who are you to say that they should be allowed to get away with this?
Would you say the same about, say, Thames Water?
I was saying they might do that – according to reports I have seen
@Jenny – are we not discussing business and industry abusing the letter of the law?
Jenny, what you’re saying is really ill-considered, since the law, by definition, interferes in people’s (private) affairs. You’re just begging the question – laws are decided by people, we don’t find them under rocks, we decide what is lawful or not, we don’t legislate against criminal acts, legislation makes an act criminal.
Also, all businesses operate in the world, therefore, the world has an absolutely legitimate interest in what that business does and does not do, hence, legislation, which is the world acting upon that legitimate interest. That’s the very reason you can talk about businesses “operating within the law”. Without the idea of legitimate interest, there would be no law for you to refer to. You’ve really demonstrated the paucity of your understanding, and your obsequious, genuflecting defence of the unethical wealthy. Not a look worth aiming for in my opinion.
Wow, that hit a nerve
No, I speculate there is general world weariness here, dissolving into irritation at the endless cavalcade paraded before us, of casually employed, perfunctory ignorance displayed, with foolishly disparaging intent; about issues that matter, and actually require reflective thought.
“Do they care?”
Yes, but only about profit.
Since Brexit , without knowing much about it, there do seem to be increasing worries that LSE is losing out re US and EU exchanges.
(Declaration of interest – have a family member working in HR software there)
Thank you, Andrew.
Yes. LSEG has been bulking up and diversifying its income streams, including, oddly, a US retail FX business.
One suggestion is to sell the exchange business to a rival and concentrate on the businesses bolted on since flotation.
A few times a year, French TV compares the London and Paris bourses and explains not just Brexit, but Paris has a better range of firms listed.
It’s not a UK company so the only benefit to the UK for this listing is the legal fees, listing fees and some trading commissions.
Can’t see why this is seen as a great coup.
Your point about it’s ethics are well made…. scary how cheaply we sell our name.
An obvious question might be is it wise to encourage certain companies to list on the LSE?
They may be legal but……..
It’s an old City joke that ‘ethics’ is a country East of London…
I was born there….
And left very soon thereafter….
Also, if the NYSE said “no, too dodgy for us” – red flags should be fluttering very visibly!