"Allegations of British capital market failure are numerous, range from claims of domestic investor bias before 1914 to charges of short-termism against institutional investors towards the end of the last century, and are frequently contentious. This paper revisits this literature by pointing to the post-1945 market for initial public offerings (IPO) as a clear instance of capital market failure. Despite the tender offer delivering substantially lower underpricing than traditional IPO methods, it was adopted by only 1 in 12 firms going public. This missed opportunity cost issuing firms between £600 million and £1.3 billion in IPO proceeds forgone between 1960 and 1986 at 2005 prices, excluding privatisations, and can be attributed to a lack of competition among issuing houses and brokers before Big Bang."