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The PISCES Fee Holiday Ends on 1 July. Here Is What the First Real Price on Private Share Trading Tells UK Founders

  • Writer: Shawn Jhanji
    Shawn Jhanji
  • Jun 30
  • 5 min read
Illustration of a child leaving a school holiday scene and walking towards a new financial landscape, symbolising the start of PISCES trading fees for private company shares from 1 July.

On 30 June, something quietly ends for anyone who owns shares in a private British company. Until that date, trading those shares on the London Stock Exchange's Private Securities Market, the venue built under the UK's new PISCES regime, costs nothing in transaction fees. From 1 July, the first real price arrives. The seller pays one per cent. The buyer still pays nothing. It is a small number, and that is exactly why it is worth a founder's attention.


For most of the people this affects, an early employee sitting on options, an angel who backed a round in 2022, a founder who would like to take a little off the table without selling the company, the headline is not the percentage. It is that a route to selling private shares now exists at all, and that it is being priced like a normal market rather than a favour. The introductory free period was a launch incentive. Its expiry is the moment PISCES stops behaving like a pilot and starts behaving like infrastructure.


What actually changes


The London Stock Exchange's Private Securities Market has run a phased fee schedule since it opened. No transaction fees were payable by either side until 30 June 2026. From 1 July 2026, only the seller pays a one per cent transaction fee, and buyers remain exempt. A further step is already scheduled: from 1 July 2027 the model moves to its full shape, one per cent for sellers and 0.75 per cent for buyers. The wider PISCES framework itself sits inside a five year FCA supervised sandbox that runs to 2030, so the pricing is being set while the rules are still being learned.


Three platforms have now been approved to operate under PISCES: the London Stock Exchange's Private Securities Market, JP Jenkins' Private Market, and Asset Match, which was authorised on 21 April 2026. The London Stock Exchange and JP Jenkins both completed their first trading events in March 2026. The fee change applies to the exchange's own venue, and the more interesting question for founders is whether the other operators match it, undercut it, or price differently as they hold their own events.


Why one per cent is the right number to think about


It is tempting to read a new fee as a new cost. For private share liquidity, the comparison that matters is not zero. It is what selling private shares used to require. Before PISCES, a shareholder who wanted out faced a negotiated secondary transfer: lawyers on both sides, board consent, a valuation argument, often months of work and several thousand pounds in fees to move a modest holding. Against that, one per cent on a structured, repeatable trading event is not expensive. It is an order of magnitude cheaper than the friction it replaces.


That is the part founders should sit with. The significance of the 1 July change is not that liquidity got more expensive. It is that liquidity got a published, predictable price for the first time. A founder planning a future raise can now point an early backer to a realistic exit horizon with a known cost attached, rather than the old answer, which was effectively wait for an acquisition or an initial public offering and hope. Predictable cost is what turns a mechanism into a market.


There is a second order effect worth naming. Because the seller carries the fee and the buyer does not, the model is tilted, for now, to encourage demand. For founders, deep buyer demand at an intermittent event is the difference between a real clearing price for their company's shares and a thin, embarrassing one. The pricing choice is not neutral. It is a lever, and watching how operators use it through 2026 and into the 2027 step up will tell us a great deal about how serious the competition for private market liquidity really is.


The open question


Here is what is genuinely unresolved. PISCES gives private shares a place to trade and now a price to trade at. What it does not yet settle is how this layer connects to the infrastructure that could make these events cheaper, more frequent and more accessible to smaller companies, namely tokenised share registers that automate settlement and ownership records. The publication has set out before why the three year holding condition for SEIS and EIS relief is a condition of the relief rather than a legal lock on the shares, and why tokenisation paired with PISCES windows could in principle compress a founder's liquidity horizon. The fee schedule does not change that analysis. What it does is make the economics real enough to test.


So the question we would put to the people building this, and we would genuinely like answers on the record, is this. Does a one per cent seller fee, stepping to a two sided model in 2027, support the kind of frequent, low friction liquidity that early shareholders in small companies actually need, or is it priced for larger, later stage holdings where one per cent on a big number still pays for a lot of process? And as tokenised registers mature, will operators pass the efficiency through to fees, or keep it?


We are inviting comment from the PISCES operators, the London Stock Exchange's Private Securities Market, JP Jenkins and Asset Match, from the equity management platforms now entering the space, and from the SEIS and EIS specialists at bodies such as EISA and the advisers who structure these rounds. If you are pricing, building or advising on private market liquidity, tell us where you think this lands.


Key takeaways

  • From 1 July 2026, sellers on the London Stock Exchange's Private Securities Market pay a one per cent transaction fee, ending the introductory free period. Buyers remain exempt until a two sided model arrives on 1 July 2027.

  • The story is not a new cost. It is the first published, predictable price for selling private company shares, which is what turns a mechanism into a market.

  • One per cent is far cheaper than the legal and broker friction of a traditional negotiated secondary transfer, so the change is a structural improvement for early shareholders, not a setback.

  • Placing the fee on sellers tilts the model toward buyer demand, which matters for founders who need a real clearing price at intermittent trading events.

  • The unresolved part is how PISCES pricing interacts with tokenised share registers and whether efficiency gains reach the smallest companies and shareholders.


This article is general information and an open editorial question, not tax, legal or investment advice. PISCES fee schedules are set by individual operators and can change.

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