#70 Unlocking private market liquidity – PISCES, platforms and opportunity with Mason Doick from JP Jenkins

TRANSCRIPT: THE bizval PODCAST
Guest: Mason Doick, JP Jenkins
Host: Graham Stephen, CEO and Co-Founder, bizval

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[00:00:36] Graham Stephen: Alright, I’m gonna kick off, okay? Welcome to another episode of the bizval Podcast, where we talk about deal-making, valuations, entrepreneurship, growing businesses, and the forces sort of shaping that. I’m Graham Stephen, the CEO of bizval.

[00:00:52] Graham Stephen: And today, I’m thrilled to be joined by Mason Doich. He’s the head of corporate at JP Jenkins, which is one of the UK’s leading

[00:01:00] Graham Stephen: market venues for unlisted shares, and also a key operator in the Pisces framework. So, Mason, welcome, we’re really excited to have you today.

[00:01:09] Mason Doick: Thank you, Graham, for having me, and I’m very excited to discuss further.

[00:01:12] Graham Stephen: Fantastic. So, in terms of today’s podcast, we’re going to break it down. Mason’s going to give us a little bit about his background and his influences. We’re going to talk a little bit about J.P. Jenkins and what they do, the Pisces platform. We’re going to dive a little bit into, you know.

[00:01:30] Graham Stephen: Bisvel’s recent quarterly report, which Mason was also kindly a contributor to that, and then some rapid-fire questions, as usual, just some fun questions at the end to… to get to know Mason a little bit more. So… so Mason, let’s… let’s dive right in, and let’s go back to the beginning. Tell… tell us a little bit about your journey.

[00:01:50] Graham Stephen: you know, what were some of your early influences, what led you into capital markets, and all those things, and eventually JP Jenkins. So the floor is yours. You’re welcome to share anything that, you know, that you’re comfortable sharing with. Maybe one or two embarrassing stories along the way, too.

[00:02:10] Mason Doick: No, thanks, Greg. So, I guess, there’s a whole host of things, you know, not as an extensive career as maybe some of the guests on the podcast, but, you know, over 10 years now in capital markets, and both public and private companies, and working alongside different boards and advisors.

[00:02:28] Mason Doick: I think what really led me into this space, was an interest in how companies work, evolve, grow, the whole process from start to finish. You know, when I first started my early career, very heavily involved in, pension funds and blue-chip stocks and FTSE, and, you know, these companies are great and they’re fantastic, but they’re inflation hedging.

[00:02:51] Mason Doick: Portfolios, you know, bond and equity portfolios and large wealth management companies. It’s incredibly important, part of everyone’s portfolio, both your pensions and elsewhere, but it doesn’t get you excited and get me out of bed every morning. So I moved across to private equity, private companies, venture capital, and seeing and helping and supporting and raising capital for early-stage companies in the start of my career, and watching them with TV ads, and then their product in store, or

[00:03:20] Mason Doick: B2C, B2B, consumer businesses, things like that were quite interesting, exciting to go and say to somebody, oh, this, you know, company on the shelf is what I helped, you know, or part of it, was to get to that point. So, yeah, very, very interesting. I mean, there’s been a lot of people that have supported me and mentored me across.

[00:03:36] Mason Doick: maybe help me with, you know, certain things, whether I’ve listened or not, I don’t know. But, you know, we’ve had, and, you know, I’ve got to say, we’ve had a really good, colleague who we’ve been involved with for a number of years, myself and Veronica at JP Jenkins have worked with a chap called Malcolm Byrne, and he was a city veteran across America, Australia, China, and has done, you know, a good

[00:03:59] Mason Doick: Good, good long-standing career without naming too many years, and giving away his age, but,

[00:04:06] Mason Doick: you know, incredibly good mentor in this space, and brought me into, sort of, where the JP Jenkins fold is now.

[00:04:12] Graham Stephen: Fantastic. And, you know, I mean, you obviously went into finance and capital markets, but, you know, in your early days before that, did you always have a desire to get involved in business? You know, no illusions of becoming a doctor, or a professional sports person, or anything along that… anything like that along the way?

[00:04:27] Mason Doick: Well, interestingly, or maybe not today, I don’t know, all of our, you know, family, of a lot of our family members have been in the military, so I did think about maybe doing a stint there, and then halfway up the Brecon Beacons when I was, in my late teens.

[00:04:42] Mason Doick: I realized that actually being beasted, running up a mountain in the pouring rain with a t-shirt on, probably wasn’t for me. So, yeah, I moved across to the finance world following that. But, you know, I think there’s been a couple of times where I’ve looked at different avenues and different roles, but yeah, sort of just fell into it from other contacts and points of view.

[00:05:05] Graham Stephen: Yeah, I mean, something you touched on a bit earlier is, you know, when you’re in the sort of the world of listed companies and all that, a lot of that’s about stewardship and…

[00:05:13] Graham Stephen: And maintaining, okay? Whereas, I guess, where you’re at now, it’s a lot more about helping businesses grow. And, you know, it’s quite a different mindset that’s… that’s needed in terms of those, sort of, two… I guess almost two sides of the same coin in some ways.

[00:05:28] Graham Stephen: Yeah, why… why are you sort of more interested on… on the sort of growing side? Now, if I look back at my career, there’s also a number of parallels. You know, I started in a big…

[00:05:37] Graham Stephen: corporate bank, and then slowly move towards entrepreneurship, and have a deep passion for helping, you know, business owners and that grow and build new things. So what was that sort of trigger for you? Was it a conversation at some point? Was it just…

[00:05:53] Graham Stephen: Yeah, maybe being a bit unfulfilled in the sort of.

[00:05:57] Mason Doick: Well, I think…

[00:05:58] Graham Stephen: space.

[00:05:58] Mason Doick: I think the excitement of, of, you know, working very closely with management, you know, when you mentioned, Graham, about working in, like, a big bank, so I was in, you know, a building society or a bank after as well,

[00:06:09] Graham Stephen: Yeah.

[00:06:11] Mason Doick: you know, you’re such a… there’s such a large machine at work, and you are one of the many cops in that machine, and you’re supporting a very large entity move very slowly. And that is… obviously, we need… we need everyone to do that, or people to do that job and fulfill that role, but for me, working very closely with a founder or an entrepreneur who is completely in love and obsessed with their business.

[00:06:35] Mason Doick: Whether or not their decisions were always right, was, you know, another story, but… having that engagement with senior management, seeing how the business grows, watching it over the years develop, and also, as well, as you’ve seen, you know, loads of these companies are fantastic, especially out in the regions outside of London, maybe outside of different, you know, capital cities, wherever they’re jurisdictional domiciled in whichever country they’re domiciled, but…

[00:06:58] Mason Doick: You know, there’s so many good businesses out there that are… doing incredibly well, but don’t understand, maybe, the whole commercial, corporate finance, capital markets world. And, you know, I realized that, you know, investors

[00:07:12] Mason Doick: were supporting these companies, but couldn’t get any liquidity. They couldn’t get the business to where they wanted to get to. And then I thought back to my public markets, you know, experience, and thought, well, actually, junior market-listed companies also struggled with liquidity, and were so focused on share price, but weren’t actually bothered about… or were bothered, but they weren’t focused on the growth of the company, which was the most important thing. So it sort of led me into that route.

[00:07:36] Mason Doick: Because I just thought, well, actually, there’s got to be a way, you know… someone once said to me, you know, there’s a million and one ways to invest in the company. It’s like, sitting at Clapham Station, or one of the big trains, a water loon, seeing all the trains coming in, everyone’s telling you how to get in, but nobody’s telling you how

[00:07:52] Mason Doick: You know, there’s very limited exit opportunities for both private companies and public companies, and I think that space is dwindling even more. So, yeah, something that was sort of a force that pushed me this way into providing other options.

[00:08:09] Graham Stephen: Fantastic. And, you know, before we move on to a bit about J.P. Jenkins, and you kind of leading into that. you know, you’ve started working with founders directly, and, you know, I speak… speak, you know, the same language, you know, that’s what gets me out of bed every morning, is to actually engage with founders and owners, you know, whether we’re doing a valuation for a divorce, or growth, or whatever the case might be.

[00:08:31] Graham Stephen: engaging with the founders always… there’s something special about that. And you… you touched on that, but what would you say…

[00:08:39] Graham Stephen: one of, sort of, the biggest learnings you’ve had in terms of working with founders? You know, where are the biggest gaps that they experience? Is it a question of, you know, lack of finance understanding? Is it not knowing what they don’t know? Is it that they’re just so…

[00:08:52] Graham Stephen: you know, obsessed about the product, what they do. Where are some of those things that you… you’ve kind of noticed over the, you know, the last few years? And how do you… how do you impact, in some of those challenges that they have?

[00:09:05] Mason Doick: So I’d definitely say the first point would be around, engaging and managing a good relationship with stakeholders. So, when I say stakeholders, that would be, you know, everyone. That would be non-exec directors, it could be the board, it could be, shareholders or family or friends that invested from early doors.

[00:09:24] Mason Doick: Because I always notice, and I appreciate that this is not the case across the board, you know, there’s lots of very good companies that report on a regular basis, but I’ve noticed that, you know, in my capital-raising years.

[00:09:36] Mason Doick: lots of early-stage private companies, or growing private companies, were focused purely on the next raise, the next project, the next acquisition. And they would only go back to those existing shareholders who, from day one, took the most risk, only when they needed more capital.

[00:09:51] Mason Doick: And I think when you speak to the end investor that was investing in these deals, they were saying, well, actually, we feel a bit unloved.

[00:09:58] Mason Doick: You know, we’d like to, you know, we’ve taken on a lot of risk, we’ve taken on the risk capital from early doors.

[00:10:04] Mason Doick: we’d like to be engaged and involved a bit more with the business. Now, it’s a complete catch-22, because you understand that, you know, if you look at these crowdfunding platforms, and you’ve got these bulletin boards, and there’s people calling out to run the business, and they own one share, that’s not helpful either. So, you know, from the perspective of the company.

[00:10:22] Mason Doick: Having, maybe, regular updates, announcements, quarterly updates, whatever it may be, with existing stakeholders is incredibly important to manage both the expectations of an exit, but also the future plan of the business.

[00:10:35] Mason Doick: You know, I’ve seen it throughout my last, so, 10, 11 years now, of people saying, well, when is the exit going to be? What is the exit plan? You know, circumstances change around, you know, children, divorce, marriage, whatever it may be. How can we maintain a good relationship with all stakeholders and support them the whole way forward?

[00:10:55] Mason Doick: I think the other… the other element is, I guess. as you mentioned, you sort of touched on it a bit there, is that you’ve got these very successful businesses that are, you know, doing well, but they sort of stagnate over a period of time, and it plateaus, the growth, and it’s… it’s that sort of

[00:11:13] Mason Doick: no man’s land of what is the next step? How do we grow? And it’s a balance between raising significant capital and diluting

[00:11:22] Mason Doick: The existing shareholders and the founders share ownership. But then, do you want to give away that control and lack of liquidity and opportunity? But at the same time, you need to get interest in that step to take maybe the next… the move on. So, there’s always these sort of scales of opportunity plus, you know, benefits plus negatives and dilution. And you’ve seen it a million times over with example companies that raise

[00:11:47] Mason Doick: tens of thousands of millions of pounds at extremely high valuations when the market’s conducive. Maybe in 2021, for example, you saw loads of companies raise.

[00:11:56] Graham Stephen: Yeah?

[00:11:57] Mason Doick: And then now we’re sitting here four or five years later, and those same businesses saying, well, we’re having another down round. And the amount of companies that have some down rounds that, you know, are struggling to raise now, or, you know, struggling to raise sophisticated capital higher valuations, I think those are the things we need to manage, or I get interested in managing with them and supporting them, and, you know, give them… maybe it sounds quite brutal, but maybe a realistic opinion.

[00:12:20] Mason Doick: On what… what we can expect,

[00:12:24] Graham Stephen: Yeah, I mean, it’s so interesting, you touched on two key things, and it’s interesting how you know, that was a fundamental to our business. It’s about relationships and that sort of human connection. You know, the technical stuff and the theory and the MBA stuff, that exists, and it’s almost assumed nowadays. And even with the advent of AI and that, so those relationships and understanding how to manage the relationships with the stakeholders and the owners is… is fundamental.

[00:12:48] Graham Stephen: And, you know, that second piece as well around managing those trade-offs. What choices do you have? It’s not always about growth at all costs, and sometimes when a business owner is so passionate about what they do, they, you know, they dive in, they go into tunnel vision, which is great.

[00:13:02] Graham Stephen: But they lose sense of that biggest perspective, so I guess that’s also the role that you get to play in… in helping them… helping them through that, which… which I guess leads us into the…

[00:13:11] Graham Stephen: the next question, right? And that’s a bit about JP Jenkins. So I’m sure some of the listeners listening in are already clients of yours, or prospective clients, and they know everything that you do, but for those that are unfamiliar with JP Jenkins, can you maybe just share a little bit about, you know, who you are as a business, what do you do, why do you exist?

[00:13:31] Mason Doick: Yeah, of course. So JP Jenkins is a fairly heritage brand, I imagine, and, you know, in some people’s eyes, it’s been around for

[00:13:40] Mason Doick: over 30 years, the original JP Jenkins business was a, market maker for one of the biggest junior markets of that time called OffX. And OffX Market or Exchange, was…

[00:13:53] Mason Doick: in 91, trading a lot of the biggest private companies in the UK, so you had

[00:13:59] Mason Doick: Wetabix, National Car Parks, Adams Brewery, lots of football clubs on there, big Premier League football clubs on there. And that was long before AIM was launched in 95. So, incredibly important history, but something we don’t dwell on too much, because the real, core business, of J.P. Jenkins now, and the fundamentals, was actually really relaunched into 22, 23.

[00:14:22] Mason Doick: So, the old heritage of that brand was sort of left in a box in a corporate finance house or investment bank for a long time. And me and the team came together in 22, 23, and we bought about trying to re-enlight, this sort of growth market. We realized, you know, that

[00:14:39] Mason Doick: junior markets in the UK were struggling. There was lots of companies delisting, or coming off markets, or not seeing them as exactly what they would require at that point in time. And I saw a lot of private equity portfolios growing, but there was a boiling point of liquidity where lots of people were taking money in, but none of these portfolios were getting any money out. And there was creations of continuation funds, portfolios buying each other, but there was no exit.

[00:15:05] Mason Doick: So that’s essentially where JP Jenkins was born, is that how can we create a private market that allows trading in any security, not only shares of privately limited companies or unquoted PLCs? And, really we thought, well, actually, if we can recycle capital

[00:15:24] Mason Doick: That’s gone into early-stage ventures and done incredibly well. to investors, there is a continuality of liquidity for further new ventures and new businesses and new entrepreneurs to grow. You know, which is only… not only good for the economy, but it’s good for hiring, obviously, a number of new employees across several, you know, lots of various copious amounts of sectors.

[00:15:45] Mason Doick: And it’s a really good cyclical nature for the economy in the UK. So.

[00:15:49] Graham Stephen: Hmm.

[00:15:50] Mason Doick: In essence, yeah, JP Jenkins is a, best way to understand it, a private sort of stock market, a private stock exchange in a way. Sort of caveat that with, you know, inverted commas. It is a regulated private market. It works with all of the regulated counterparties and retail brokers, likes of the big names.

[00:16:09] Mason Doick: In the UK. Anyone that has a UK-regulated broker can trade on JP Jenkins. And certainly, if you…

[00:16:19] Mason Doick: had an involvement in a company as an angel investor, or you’re on the board of a private company, you’re thinking, actually, you know, we’ve got some shareholders that would like to maybe take some money off the table, or they’re giving you a bit of pain, or a bit of a nuisance, you know, it’s a good way to help them out in the business, and bring in new interest in investment.

[00:16:39] Graham Stephen: Fantastic, and I think just to touch on a few points there, I mean, as you say, you kind of re… relaunched the business or the brand 22-23, which was… which was a very different world post-COVID, post-Brexit, to… yeah, let’s… let’s kind of say that the…

[00:16:53] Graham Stephen: the earlier years. I don’t know whether you go pre-2008 or post-2008, but let’s say that the world was incredibly different, and I think, at its core, there’s two things that you touch on. One is liquidity, which is critical, no matter where in the business spectrum you are.

[00:17:09] Graham Stephen: And governance. But not governance for the sake of, you know, strangling businesses, but governance in a way that enables growth. And I think those are the, you know, the fundamental pillars of what you support.

[00:17:22] Graham Stephen: So, let’s get practical here. What sort of companies should engage and work with you guys?

[00:17:30] Mason Doick: I think it really depends. It’s always a question I get asked from the advisors, the lawyers, the banks, say, you know, we’ve got hundreds of private companies, but who can you actually help? And I feel like, and sometimes I’m sort of dancing around the question, which I don’t mean to, it’s more of a sense of.

[00:17:44] Mason Doick: Because it’s a market, it’s so open, it’s so broad. You know, so I’d love to say to you, this is exactly the client we’re looking for. But realistically, the companies can be a couple of million valuation all the way up to some of our larger ones being shy of a billion. You know, so we’ll have companies that are doing, you know, we’ve got one at the moment that’s doing over 600, 700 million in turnover. But the reality is, you know, we have obviously lots of smaller companies as well.

[00:18:10] Mason Doick: And, you know, because it’s a market, it is, and I can’t stand this, this, definition, but I hear it all the time in my life, is sector agnostic. You know, we are, we are, we are, you know, sector agnostic. There is, you know, every company from tech to infrastructure to retail, to property to, we’ve got lots of pharma, bio, you know, so it just depends on, on that type of business. Realistically, if a company’s got

[00:18:40] Mason Doick: had 7 rounds of funding, or over the last several years has raised funding, it’s got a growing cap table, it might have some employees with shareholders, there is a need for liquidity, they want to have a printed price, a mark-to-market, a, you know, a third-party trading platform, then that’s perfect for those companies to utilize JP Jenkins.

[00:18:59] Mason Doick: It also lends itself, I imagine, to, you know, I know it does, to those companies that are on the way up. So, you know, the occasional company nowadays that does want to IPO, we hope there is more of them coming through, they can certainly use JP Jenkins as a perfect stepping stone. So we’ve been described as a sort of incubator, nursery, foundation towards a public market listing, whether that is in the US, whether that’s overseas.

[00:19:24] Mason Doick: in the UK. It doesn’t make too much difference, but it gives an opportunity for the company to have a mechanism for the next step forward. And then likewise, obviously, if there are companies that are moving markets.

[00:19:36] Mason Doick: We see companies from Euronext and other alternative exchanges say, well, actually, we’d like to have a UK listing, or a cross-border listing, or a UK… and albeit that we’re not an RIE, we’re not a recognized investment exchange, and we’re not a public exchange, you’ve got that technicality of having an icing code, you can trade electronically, settle electronically, and you’re UK-based, which is attractive to overseas companies and shareholders and investors.

[00:20:02] Graham Stephen: Yeah, that’s fantastic, and I think you play such an important part in the ecosystem. I think that’s something that’s not lost. You know, you can’t do this on your own. It’s dependent on the ecosystem. You almost act as a… facilitate is the wrong word, but it’s… you kind of, like, grease the wheels of the ecosystem, so to speak. And you’re right, it starts right at the…

[00:20:21] Graham Stephen: sort of the SMB or SME market, if you’re in the US, right through to probably the upper-mid market.

[00:20:28] Graham Stephen: And… yeah, I think the key thing you touched on there is there’s got to be a need for liquidity, and that could be for a variety of reasons, right? I mean, two shareholders have had a falling out, and, you know, one of them wants to leave. In a traditional business, how do you… how do you do that? You know, that capability doesn’t always exist, so I think it’s a fundamental…

[00:20:48] Graham Stephen: You know, part of that ecosystem and having a great impact. So, I want to just talk very quickly, is why is this important, particularly in the context of where public markets are?

[00:21:01] Graham Stephen: Right now. You know, certainly, I’m based in South Africa, but we work in the US, we work in the UK. Yeah, it’s the same, I guess, in London. Like, the level of, of listings and that have slowed down. South Africa levels of listings have slowed down. So why… why is this important?

[00:21:21] Mason Doick: I think, as you mentioned, capital markets, have always and will always play, I imagine, a very important role in every economy, and they should do, you know, I think we’re definitely not,

[00:21:34] Mason Doick: trying to replace that, or mend that, or change that. We do not see ourselves as a competitor at all, because, you know, traditional IPO is very, very different. Companies that want to raise significant amounts of capital, they want to grow and expand and scale, I will say to them, you know, certainly you need to look at listing on a public exchange. The JP Jenkins mechanism is very different. It is, as I say, a mechanism for

[00:21:59] Mason Doick: trading, it’s enabling a way of shareholders buying and selling shares in your company without the need of going public. You know, without the step before going public and having that opportunity. It’s a cost-effective option to manage those expectations.

[00:22:16] Mason Doick: And, you know, I think public markets, as you mentioned, are struggling, or have struggled, you know, it’s very cyclical. I think there will return. But, you know, I think private capital is coming into companies, as everyone says, so I don’t like to repeat it, but obviously private companies are staying private for longer, you know, and that is delaying the IPO process. I think

[00:22:38] Mason Doick: Institutions are obviously pulling money and putting it into very safe options, especially in the US and Asia, where they know they can guarantee returns, or at least hope they can guarantee some stable returns for investors. So, I think, you know, there’s a lot that needs to be done to incentivize and move capital back into public markets, but JPJ themselves is a perfect holding pattern.

[00:23:02] Mason Doick: You know, so lots of these companies that promise shareholders, we’re going to IPO, you know, 2 years ago, three years ago, 5 years ago, we’re going to do a trade sale, an MBO, an exit, you know, whatever it may be. Well, that’s perfect. JP Jenkins can manage that expectation, provide a mechanism for liquidity, people can trade, it gets the pain points off of the CFO or the company secretary, and they can go about growing their business.

[00:23:26] Mason Doick: Yeah, I think… I think public markets are, you know, a very important element. We certainly don’t want to replace them, we want to be the sort of step before that. And the reality is a lot of these companies don’t even know whether they want to be public in the first place, so having options

[00:23:42] Mason Doick: you know, having options is incredibly important. You know, the reason why there’s not many variables, one of the reasons why there’s not many very large companies in the UK like there are in the US, not only because, obviously, the expansive amount of capital, but also the fact that, as entrepreneurs in the UK, we’re quite quick to sell our companies.

[00:23:59] Mason Doick: And if they held onto that business, and maybe just took a little bit of money out, and the founder, you know, paid themselves a little bit for their rewards and success, they could maintain and hold onto that IP until a larger exit. So I think what JP Jenkins does is it’s not the silver bullet for capital markets and private markets, but it is a very good solution that provides

[00:24:23] Mason Doick: A meaningful opportunity or exit, or partial exit, for all parties involved.

[00:24:29] Graham Stephen: Yeah, and it’s not… it’s not binary, right? So if you go through a listing or an IPO, you know, it becomes incredibly expensive, very regulated.

[00:24:38] Graham Stephen: On the other hand, you’ve got a situation where there’s no liquidity, and you provide almost a bridge between the two. As you say, holding pattern is probably too strong a word, but yeah, a lot of people, it’s… you don’t know which direction you want to go, and some high fast-growing companies, IPO might be the solution, but it might not be. And it might take you 2 or 3 or 4 years, and sometimes it could also be that, is it the right time to do an IPO? And I think

[00:25:03] Graham Stephen: provide a wonderful solution for those kinds of companies, as well as for companies that have no intention of ever having an IPO, but they just want some liquidity and a mechanism to take some money off the table for the owners or the founders at a certain point. So, I think that’s fantastic.

[00:25:25] Graham Stephen: So, let’s move a little bit on. So, we’ve spoken about J.P. Jenkins. Everybody’s heard, you know, the UK Pisces Initiative. It’s not, it’s not a star sign.

[00:25:36] Graham Stephen: Let’s dive into that. It’s been making headlines, so firstly, let’s break down Pisces, what does it actually stand for, and for our audience, what does it actually do in simple terms?

[00:25:49] Mason Doick: So, and it’s funny, I always get asked this, you can imagine, and the acronym itself, I always struggle or slow down with, and it’s funny, because they say, well, aren’t you running a Pisces operation? I say, yeah, we are, but I didn’t actually come up with the acronym myself. So Pisces is the private, private intermittent capitals and exchange system, which the Treasury and the FCA created.

[00:26:12] Mason Doick: So essentially, it’s a regulated framework, for private markets. So, what that essentially means is that,

[00:26:22] Mason Doick: you know, in the UK, of course, we’ve had lots of regulation around public markets, and I think the focus for the FCA and Treasury is how do we regulate private markets? And we have a foothold and oversight over Pisces. But, you know, we manage and give a broad set of rules to the operators themselves. The two operators being

[00:26:45] Mason Doick: ourselves, JP Jenkins, and the London Stock Exchange, or Elsair Group. I can imagine that there may be other operators that come into this space over time. It’s not that there’s a limit to how many there can be, there could be several, there could be one, there could be five. I guess it really comes down to how much demand is there, how much liquidity is there, who’s going to be using these platforms, what’s the interest.

[00:27:10] Mason Doick: So I guess it… I guess it depends on all of those items of… of… of where we see it go. One thing to obviously be clear is it’s a sandbox regulatory exercise by HMT and Treasury. So, you know, these things can change very, you know. I mean, we’ve got a five-year sandbox, the rules could change, the participants could change. What we mentioned now, Graham, may be very different in a year, two years, three years’ time. But what it is, is essentially an operation to regulate

[00:27:40] Mason Doick: private markets, and it gives us an opportunity to say, well, look, we’ve got the green stand from the regulator, we’ve got the green stand from Treasury, there is an interest and need for this, and it also provides a

[00:27:54] Mason Doick: clear guideline to companies that maybe didn’t understand private markets before, what is required and what can be achieved. So there are 17 core disclosures, of which companies need to abide by. Reality is, I think most of those companies that are in good state would probably be able to pass those 17 disclosures fairly easily. It also means that companies that want a intermittent, and obviously intermittent being a very important

[00:28:18] Mason Doick: part of the Pisces framework.

[00:28:20] Graham Stephen: I want to drill down into that as a separate point, if you don’t mind, yeah.

[00:28:23] Mason Doick: Yeah, no, definitely, it’s, you know, it’s allowing different trading windows. So, you know, you don’t have to have continuous trading, or you, you know, you don’t have… you don’t have the opportunity, really, to trade all day, every day, or week. It’s monthly auctions, quarterly auctions, maybe even one liquidity event a year. And really, the focus here is that

[00:28:46] Mason Doick: you have this Pisces model, and hopefully, obviously, I said it right at the start, you know, the private intermittent securities and capital exchange system.

[00:28:53] Mason Doick: And it’s making sure that, we follow a set of rules that… and I think the part… the point at which they brought this around was to give investors in the buy side enough information as well.

[00:29:05] Mason Doick: So, I think when you look at private markets, and I said to you, Graham, maybe tomorrow, I’ll say, have you had a look at this company? It’s a great business, maybe bizval can help out. And you say, well, actually, there’s not a huge amount of information publicly available on any of these private companies. I think part about bringing this Pisces legal framework in is that we can create a really strong data room that gives enough transparency and information to the buy side, and the investors actually part

[00:29:30] Mason Doick: participating in this market. Because previously, of years gone by, when you look at, you know, over-the-counter exchanges, or grey markets, or private markets the last 30, 50 years.

[00:29:43] Mason Doick: they’re very… it’s very, sort of, hidden, there’s not a lot of information, it’s, it’s quite ambiguous, it’s caveat mTOR, it’s buyer’s beware, it’s sort of good luck. Hopefully you know enough, right? So I think this, this, this Pisces platform, that we’re… we’re creating alongside, you know, other operators.

[00:30:04] Mason Doick: it definitely plays into the, private equity, venture capital, EMI, employment option schemes.

[00:30:10] Mason Doick: focus more, and I think if companies want, actually, a traditional trading venue and a listing sort of feel, then you go towards our match bargain trading platform, our historic trading platform. They’ve got two entities, essentially, that JP Jenkins run, or two types of markets that JP Jenkins run, and it really depends on the criteria that the company or the client wants to how we would run it.

[00:30:34] Graham Stephen: Absolutely, and I think a few points to touch on there. One, it is early days. So, you know, you guys are, let’s call it early adopters in supporting the platform’s probably the word, the initiative, and it is going to evolve, and it’s going to develop, and I think the other thing is it’s very principle-based, so yes, there’s a 17…

[00:30:51] Graham Stephen: you know, rules, but it’s not, you know, it’s not the other end of the extreme where you’ve got 300 tick boxes that you need to do just to participate, and there’s a recognition, I think, from the regulators that this is an important space, and creating liquidity. So I think it creates, as you say, a sandbox, an environment where

[00:31:10] Graham Stephen: Your participants are going to learn And in time, I guess what it does is it creates confidence, you know, so it creates transparency, as opposed to all these things being tucked away and very, very opaque.

[00:31:22] Graham Stephen: And, you know, hopefully in time, it really does become a thriving part of the, sort of, middle and lower-middle market liquidity creation, and I think that’s the intention, right? So, it’s quite exciting to be part of building that, as opposed to just plugging in into a mature ecosystem, right?

[00:31:41] Mason Doick: Definitely, I think, you know, and that’s why we were involved, and why we wanted to be involved as a company, is that, at the time.

[00:31:49] Mason Doick: you know, we were running, you know, one of the largest, even though we’re fairly embryonic in terms of the new team coming in over the last few years, we were running the largest private market, or, you know, sort of match bargain trading facility in the UK, if not Europe, and we thought, you know, well, whether or not the framework is incredibly successful, we hope it is, but, you know, we thought we need to be part of it, because we’d love to shape

[00:32:13] Mason Doick: the way private markets move. And like you said, it could be, you know, incredibly important, but I would like, you know, I definitely would like to be realistic in the fact that I know it’s not the silver bullet, I know it’s not going to be the resolution to, obviously, capital markets in general.

[00:32:27] Mason Doick: Nor do I think it’s gonna really derive loads of companies to IPO. I think, you know, that price exchange system works for

[00:32:35] Mason Doick: options for clients and companies to think about when they’ve got large employment option schemes, EBTs, DOTs, you know, like you said, if there’s that example you use where there’s two founders, and one founder’s 70 years old and wants out, and one founder’s 40 and wants to stay in the business, perfect example to use, Pisces, you know, to provide a single secondary mechanism to get them out. You know, you see in the US loads of secondary transactions, secondary sales.

[00:33:00] Mason Doick: But they are single secondary sales, they’re not a continuous secondary market. So, yeah, it just depends on what that company’s looking for, and hopefully it can be part of the arson, you know, arson rail toolkit which companies can use and utilize.

[00:33:16] Graham Stephen: Absolutely, I mean, the EIS is a really good example, employment incentive schemes, you know, it’s all very well having shares on paper as an employee in a business, but if you don’t have a way of actually cashing those out when you want to leave, it becomes nothing more than a, you know, not even a golden handcuff, it becomes a golden noose, in a way.

[00:33:36] Mason Doick: This goes back to, probably the part of my career, is when I first started in private markets, it was raising capital and tax-efficient investment schemes. And, you know, a lot of the investors that were investing in ISIS were aging, you know, and unfortunately, maybe sort of 60s, 70s, 80s plus, even older, and they were saying, well, you know, this is great, you know, we understand patient capital, we understand that we’re investing in companies that could take 10

[00:33:59] Mason Doick: 5, 8, 12, 15 years, to see a return. But, when you look at those schemes, they’re amazing and fantastic, and I’m fully behind them, you know, for supporting early-stage entrepreneurs and growth in the UK and employment and everything else.

[00:34:13] Mason Doick: But there is a huge amount of capital, and I think last time we looked at the ISA numbers, you know, there’s around 52 million…

[00:34:19] Mason Doick: or 50 million plus… no, sorry, sorry, 30 billion plus, over 52,000 companies that received EIS money, and very, very limited exits. And you look at lots of the big VCP houses that have supported hundreds of companies, and now they’re saying, well, actually, how do we recycle this capital? Where is the liquidity coming from? Who’s…

[00:34:40] Mason Doick: you know, even if it is at a discount, how can we get things moving? You know, the coax are slowly grinding.

[00:34:46] Graham Stephen: Yep.

[00:34:46] Mason Doick: And we really need to, sort of, you know, oil the mechanisms.

[00:34:52] Graham Stephen: Yeah, I think that’s a great segue into, I guess, the last section before we do the rapid-fire questions is, as you know, we recently released the bizval Q1 UK M&A report, as well as the US report, and, you know, one of the themes around that was mid-market, dry powder.

[00:35:10] Graham Stephen: And how there’s, you know, there’s a lot of money out there, but people are becoming more discerning around where they place that, as opposed to looking for, like, a quick fix and a quick win.

[00:35:19] Graham Stephen: But in your perspective, Mason, you know, how do you see the capital market evolving, and how do you see these kind of initiatives? How do you see it intersecting with M&A and valuations?

[00:35:32] Graham Stephen: what do you think the impact is going to be? I don’t know how long is a piece of string, but, you know, if you could share with our listeners just some of your thoughts on that.

[00:35:41] Mason Doick: I think the role of public markets is ever so slightly changing. I mean, everyone’s quite…

[00:35:48] Mason Doick: careful or worried or concerned about change. I know a lot of people in the traditional capital markets world don’t like change too much, but, you know, I think given, the introduction of, you know.

[00:36:02] Mason Doick: newer and newer technology, and I don’t sound… I don’t want to sound like some sort of, you know, people go crypto crazy and everything’s going to be on the ledger and things like that. You know, I’m very realistic in the fact that, you know, everything has its place, but I think the way in which people utilize capital markets is slowly changing. I think that, you know, private markets are booming, and I don’t think that will slow down at any

[00:36:27] Mason Doick: point in the next, at least, decade. You know, the US secondary market space for the last 10, 15 years is huge.

[00:36:34] Mason Doick: And you’re seeing these huge secondaries in pre-IPO companies like Palantir and Spotify and Airbnb and whoever else it may be. I think that in the UK, that will follow, with both large secondary transactions, but also secondary markets on a smaller scale for small intermittent trading.

[00:36:53] Graham Stephen: Yeah.

[00:36:53] Mason Doick: you know, it’s one of these things where I think everything has its place, but it will slowly be tweaked and changed depending on how, you know, AI, you know, everything else moves, right? You know, we have these buzzwords come into our market all the time, you know, one minute it’s ESG, then everyone gets told off for greenwashing, then it’s AI, then everyone gets told off that the valuations are too high because everyone’s put an AI wording in their document.

[00:37:18] Mason Doick: I think M&A… And buy and build strategies are incredibly important, not only for, you know, our companies, but, you know, for the wider market. I think, going on your point about what will happen to the M&A situation, I think M&A will play a massive part.

[00:37:34] Mason Doick: you know, there’s lots of take privates going on, there’s lots of acquisitions of UK companies. Listed UK companies are incredibly cheap right now, and there’s an opportunity where you’re seeing US buyers and overseas buyers picking them up all the time over the last 3-4 years.

[00:37:49] Mason Doick: I don’t think that will slow down unless markets research dramatically in the next couple of months or years. So I think, you know, M&A will play a big part, but also valuation work, right? So the relationship with BizVow is incredibly important. Lots of the companies that list on JP Jenkins need to have a material, you know, third-party valuation. They need to work with advisors, they need to have registrars, they need to have their

[00:38:14] Mason Doick: legal advisors look through, or lawyers look through the articles to make sure shares are freely transferable. So, you know, there’s an incredible part to play for every, you know, cog here in the machine.

[00:38:26] Mason Doick: And I think, yeah, we’ll all work to supporting capital markets, but I think it’s all… as long as everyone’s moving in the right direction.

[00:38:34] Graham Stephen: Yeah, I think it’s evolving, and just to kind of, like, recap on that, I think… all these things are giving, you know, alternatives or options to founders. It’s no longer, you know, binary, one way, you know, what’s it, bust, or when the million dollars will go bust. I think… I think these give optionality, it gives choices, and I think just to…

[00:38:56] Graham Stephen: touch on something else. I think there is a search for… I wouldn’t say cherry-picking, but I think there’s… there’s a return to sort of focus on quality assets as opposed to… and quality earnings, rather than

[00:39:07] Graham Stephen: growth at all costs, and I think platforms like that, you know, at their core, have that as a focus. You know, a business owner who engages with a JP Jenkins and, you know, Pisces platform, for instance, is thinking

[00:39:21] Graham Stephen: you know, more broadly than just how do I grow as quickly as possible and luck out on a great IPO at the right time?

[00:39:27] Mason Doick: Classic story of Silicon Valley Bank, right? And SoftBank and other entities where, you know, deployment of capital is the only thing, right, that they were worried about, was deploying money everywhere and anywhere, but then the reality hits quite quickly, you know, that now, actually, those companies aren’t worth what they were, and the growth surge is not

[00:39:48] Mason Doick: there, or the opportunity has slowed down, and the capex is incredibly high. And really, for us, it’s about how do you manage those businesses, recycle those liquidity, and, you know, focus on the real term.

[00:40:02] Graham Stephen: And make sure there aren’t too many zombie companies lying around driving.

[00:40:06] Mason Doick: Exactly.

[00:40:08] Graham Stephen: Madison, I think it’s been a fascinating discussion, you know, hopefully our listeners have found this informative, and we’ll give out your contact details and that in a while, but before we wrap up, we just have a bit of a fun section around some rapid-fire questions, so, you know, this is keeping you in the seat of your pants, so you ready for this?

[00:40:26] Mason Doick: Yes, yeah, let’s go.

[00:40:28] Graham Stephen: Okay, so we’ll start with the easy one. What’s your favorite part of your role?

[00:40:32] Mason Doick: Oh, I’m a bit of a cop at me saying this, but it’s, you know, you probably hear it from everyone, but working with entrepreneurs, as we said earlier, you know, I worked with… and do you know what’s interesting? When I was a child, I never thought that sat playing with,

[00:40:47] Mason Doick: toy, you know, cars and trains and things. I’d be working with the likes of companies like Hornby, you know, and then when you’re shopping as a teenager, and then 5, 10, 15 years later, I’m working with the management and the entrepreneur and founder behind SuperDry. And, you know, you’re working with these brands, and that’s what I love, is that the fact that, you know, you would have never imagined that you’d be working with all these companies.

[00:41:10] Mason Doick: Where, you know, there’s so many fascinating things going on. You know, we had a great client and company called The Huck Group, and they de-merged Ingenuity, and they joined us, and they’re on a, you know, massive growth phase. And working with those companies from all shapes and sizes and jurisdictions is what’s important to me. And, you know, I think if I didn’t do that, I’d probably be, you know.

[00:41:34] Mason Doick: slogging myself into work, just sat there sort of thinking, why am I not doing something else? So, yeah, I think it gives me a purpose, at least.

[00:41:41] Graham Stephen: And then the people you meet, I mean, that… absolutely. Okay, your best book, and why would you recommend that… I mean, it could be a novel, it could be a business book, but what’s… what’s your favorite book?

[00:41:53] Mason Doick: So the book I’m reading at the moment, which, I mean, isn’t probably what you’re looking for in that answer, but the book I’m reading at the moment is Deal Hunter, which is a book that our chairman wrote, on his story around finance and his history and his life, where he was actually the first… one of the first investors in Crocodile Dundee.

[00:42:12] Graham Stephen: Wow. Now we had…

[00:42:14] Mason Doick: Lots of… lots of small wins. Throughout his life, and obviously some big wins as well. But, you know, the whole sort of narrative in that, that book is around, being present, enjoying that moment, enjoying the, you know, each small win and the journey of getting there. You know, I think I’m… I’m myself

[00:42:36] Mason Doick: a victim of being quite impatient, you know, and I want to get to the next goal, I want to achieve the next hurdle, I want to say, why is this company, why are we as a company or marketplace not done this, this, this, and how do we help these companies? And people say, you know, well, actually, it’s all about enjoying the journey. And as you said, you know, what sets you up in the morning, what makes you work? You know, I think…

[00:42:57] Mason Doick: looking back and seeing what you’ve achieved is incredibly important, and, and, you know, that’s me. But if you were asking me another financial book, or something I read that I quite enjoyed was, Traders, Guns, and Money, was also an interesting, but quite racy one in Asia.

[00:43:13] Graham Stephen: I haven’t read either of those, so they’re definitely on my reading list for the plane over to London next… in the next couple of weeks.

[00:43:22] Graham Stephen: Two more questions. So, what’s one piece of advice you could give to an early-stage founder thinking about their exit strategy? And as an early phase, somebody who’s been in business for 2, 3, 4 years.

[00:43:35] Mason Doick: I think the advice would be, to not focus too much. You know, if you’re looking at it from a public perspective, a public situation, then obviously you’d say, let’s not focus too much on the share price. The share price is… is… can be quite volatile, when you’re in a public environment, but actually focusing on the growth, focusing on the business. You know, people get so tied up with the next raise, the next.

[00:43:59] Mason Doick: You know, what’s the next expansion? What’s the next satellite, what’s the next… you know, everyone gets… like you were mentioning earlier, Graham, about everyone’s worried about, expanding and growing incredibly quickly, and my focus is focus on

[00:44:14] Mason Doick: What’s currently working? keep it tight, keep it lean, you know, keep the cap table within the means of your control. If it grows, and people are calling for liquidity and exits, you know, it plays into having a marketplace. But it’s certainly, you know, utilizing the tools that are available to you, and making sure that the expectations of an exit are managed. You know, so, you know, as you mentioned, it used to be the promise of an IPO market.

[00:44:40] Mason Doick: an IPO would be the success, whereas now I think there are multiple options in the market to manage those expectations.

[00:44:47] Graham Stephen: I guess don’t compare yourself to the celebrity influencers who, you know, become… You know, if you’re not a billionaire in 3 months sitting on a beach in, you know, Cayman, you’ve done something wrong, right?

[00:44:58] Mason Doick: Yeah, that’s exactly it.

[00:45:01] Graham Stephen: So, you’re gonna look at your crystal ball for me. What is the one thing that you think is going to, kind of, the biggest impact on UK markets in the next 12 months?

[00:45:12] Mason Doick: Ugh, I think… there’s a lot of heavy focus on Pisces, as you said, you know, conversations for at least 2 years on… on private markets in the UK and Europe. I think that’s going to be an incredibly part… incredibly important part of the next…

[00:45:30] Mason Doick: Trend for the next 12 months, next 2 years. I think revitalising public markets in UK, but also other jurisdictions, and looking at what can we tweak in terms of the regulators, the infrastructure, the access to capital, I think it’s going to be incredibly important. I know the pension funds have been saying that they’re going to actually try and do something to invite, you know, invigorate markets. I think those trends are going to be important, but

[00:45:56] Mason Doick: The reality is, liquidity has been the main trend of every market for… since existence, right? And I think that will always continue to be the biggest question, buy side. You know, who is buying these shares? How do we get liquidity? How do we improve market conditions? And I think that will be the biggest focus, but watch private markets, I think that’s going to be the biggest conversation in the next 12 months.

[00:46:19] Mason Doick: And, secondary markets, and hopefully JP Jenkins will be, be top of the, top of the table.

[00:46:23] Graham Stephen: I was gonna say, you’re perfectly positioned to help facilitate and help everybody in that ecosystem, so we… we look… we look on excitedly to see… to see how that evolves, and

[00:46:35] Graham Stephen: Mason, you know, I just want to say a massive thank you for joining us today. I think, you know, we’ve covered a bit about your background, about JP Jenkins, Pisces, it’s been incredibly…

[00:46:45] Graham Stephen: informative, and, you know, just understanding how platforms like JP Jenkins support it. So, I appreciate your time, and any closing thoughts before we wrap up?

[00:46:55] Mason Doick: Maybe the fact that, I didn’t touch on, and this is one thing that came to as we were talking just now, is that, you know, private markets and JP Jenkins as a, as a private exchange, really, or private market, it’s not, it’s not,

[00:47:09] Mason Doick: siloed in its use, right? So people think, well, actually, if we use JP Jenkins, it is a… or a private market in any case, it is just for trading shares.

[00:47:19] Mason Doick: You know, lots of companies will use the platform for a whole host of different things, and it’s so difficult to sort of say, well, this is the answer, right? You know, companies will use it to run buybacks, they’ll use it to list subsidiaries to benchmark the valuation, they’ll use it for a whole host of options. You know, we even ran it where you’ll have companies that run quarterly or semi-annual transactions.

[00:47:42] Mason Doick: Because, you know, we used to get loads of family-owned businesses say, oh, we’ve got lots of shareholders, we’re 100 years old plus, but we’ve been doing manual stock transfer forms. Please, can you help us?

[00:47:53] Mason Doick: loses it, right? Or the company secretary, she’s pulling her hair out because he’s doing all these stuff. So, it’s so many use cases. You know, it’s incredibly malleable, and it’s useful just to have a conversation in any case on any exit planning, whether or not we can help, is another matter.

[00:48:11] Graham Stephen: Fantastic, and if everybody’s curious, finding about you, where can they get hold of you, Mason? How can they… how can they get hold of JP Jenkins to share that with our listeners?

[00:48:20] Mason Doick: Yeah, of course, hangs great. So if you’d like to see the whites of my eyes, we’re, we’re just next to Selfridges, so if anyone’s in the UK and shopping, then, please pop in, and our offices are there, and lovely to meet for a coffee, but, yeah, my email is md, my initials at jpjenkins.com, and happy to have a conversation or coffee, or call with anyone.

[00:48:39] Graham Stephen: Fantastic. Well, thanks everyone for joining us today. To everyone listening, also, if you want to check out something that Mason’s written, check out the 2026 UK M&A report at bizvalglobal.com.

[00:48:51] Graham Stephen: And stay tuned to our bizval podcast, where we share insights and valuations, deal-making, and just interesting stories with entrepreneurs and influencers in this space. So, Mason, good to see you. I’ll be in London in a few weeks’ time, and we’ll be catching up over coffee and a meal, so…

[00:49:07] Graham Stephen: Thanks for today, and we’ll chat soon.

[00:49:09] Mason Doick: See you soon.

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