Just Eat ousted from Ftse in UK tech stock blow

One of Britain’s biggest online platforms is getting ousted from the UK’s benchmark index in a blow to the country’s effort to nurture a stable of world-class technology companies.

Just Eat Takeaway.com will leave the Ftse-100 this month, along with Weir Group, index provider Ftse Russell said in its quarterly review of changes to the benchmark. Meggitt and Morrison Supermarkets will take their places.

Ftse Russell classified Just Eat Takeaway as British after the 2020 combination of Britain’s Just Eat and Dutch competitor Takeaway.com, making it eligible for the Ftse, because the company had said it would delist its stock from Euronext Amsterdam. 

Just Eat Takeaway backtracked on that earlier this year, prompting Ftse Russell to change the company’s assigned nationality to Dutch last month.

The ouster means the Ftse-100’s already-low technology weighting will shrink even further. Technology stocks account for only 1.8% of the index, versus about 30% for the S&P-500 index in the US.

-Bloomberg