Mark Austin

Practice Areas

Mark Austin advises clients on a full range of public and private securities offerings, as well as M&A and general corporate matters across multiple sectors.

He leverages extensive experience to advise companies and investment banks on public and private corporate matters generally, including IPOs, secondary capital raises, and M&A.

A well-known figure in the UK’s legal and financial sectors who has been one of the principal architects of the reform of the UK's markets in recent years, Mark received a CBE in the King’s 2024 New Year Honours List for services to the economy. In 2025, he was appointed to establish and chair the Dematerialisation Market Action Taskforce (DEMAT). The taskforce is set to play a crucial role in removing paper share certificates and moving to a fully intermediated system of shareholding in the UK, marking a significant step forward in the evolution of the nation’s financial infrastructure of the UK’s capital markets.

In 2021, the Chancellor of the Exchequer appointed Mark as the independent chair of the UK Secondary Capital Raising Review, which proposed reforms to the capital raising process for listed companies, and Mark delivered the Review to the Chancellor in July 2022. He also advised Lord Hill on the UK Listing Review in 2021. His numerous significant roles within the UK’s financial regulatory framework have led directly to the successful implementation of the reforms in July 2024.

Mark is a member of the UK’s Capital Markets Industry Taskforce (CMIT), which the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in July 2022, and was also a member of HM Treasury’s Digitisation Taskforce, which reported in July 2024. Mark also sits on the FCA’s Markets Practitioner Panel, which advises the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) on financial market matters, and he is the former Chair of the Listing Authority Advisory Panel, the practitioner panel that advises FCA on primary markets policy and regulation issues. He additionally sits on the London Stock Exchange’s Primary Markets Group.