The London Stock Exchange's new private stock market staged its latest auction Wednesday, as the city's bourse looks to demonstrate the utility of its novel secondary market.

Workplace compliance group Veremark sold shares worth 6.5 million pounds ($8.6 million) via the LSE's Private Securities Market, according to a spokesperson for the company.

Veremark's secondary offering didn't raise fresh funds for the London-based software company, but it did give early investors and company employees a chance to access liquidity for their otherwise hard-to-trade shares, Chief Executive Daniel Callaghan said in an interview.

And for the LSE, the auction was the latest test as it seeks to expand the appeal of its private securities market.

"It's the first equity market that we've launched in decades, so anything of the size and scale like this, you want to see first and foremost that you've got successful auctions and people are able to transact," Tom Simmons, director of private markets development at the LSE, said in an interview.

More than 50 Veremark shareholders used the auction to sell down their positions, the company said. Shares were sold at the same price as the company's Series B fundraising round, which valued it at around $100 million. Shares were bought mainly by existing investors, including Gresham House Ventures, the same spokesperson for the company said.

Veremark is significantly smaller than the other companies that have used the exchange. However, a smaller company benefiting from the exchange is a positive development, given the LSE expected early participants to be larger, Simmons said.

The private markets framework--dubbed Pisces--gives companies control over their secondary offerings, Callaghan said. Veremark was able to avoid handing over more of the company to outside investors than it would otherwise have liked to, the chief executive said. Veremark will look to complete a Series C fundraising round in 2027. Callaghan wouldn't disclose a target valuation, but said the company would look to significantly increase its valuation.

Part of the LSE's motivation for running the private markets venue is to forge early links with young private companies that might one day want to go public. For Veremark, a potential listing is a long way off. But Callaghan said he is keen to maintain Veremark's relationship with the LSE.

"It would be our delight to one day list in London," he said.

The private markets exchange received regulatory approval in August 2025, when the LSE heralded it as the world's first bespoke regulatory regime for a private stock exchange. The first transaction using Pisces involved shares in biotech group Oxford Science Enterprises in March 2026. Auctions for shares in fintech company Moneybox and autonomous driving group Wayve followed.

The venue was created to adapt to a world in which companies were avoiding publicly listing, potentially locking in early-stage investors for indeterminate amounts of time. The U.K. government has said it wants the platform to "act as a stepping stone for companies eyeing a listing in future preparing and easing the journey to an IPO." The LSE hopes the exchange will encourage companies to scale and stay in the country, rather than opting to fundraise and list abroad.

London's bourse has struggled to compete with New York in recent years to attract promising startups. Chip maker Arm Holdings and financial services group Marex are among a bevy of U.K. companies that opted for a U.S. listing in recent years.

Secondary venues exist elsewhere, including the Nasdaq Private Market, but Simmons said the LSE's approach was innovative.

"We had private companies that were staying private for longer before doing an IPO, and we would see that there were then inflection points where they needed liquidity for existing shareholders," Simmons said. "And there wasn't really anything that we could offer them at that point other than an IPO."

Other exchanges and regulators have contacted the LSE to learn about how Pisces works, Simmons said. But he said the exchange needs to build up a longer track record before it can think about scaling significantly.

It's still too early for the exchange to consider a target for companies using it, Simmons said. "Really, we just want to see the first transactions go well and to broaden the number of use cases."