To the London Stock Exchange (LSE) for a ‘scale-up capital’ circus in which 18 ambitious tech ventures had ten minutes each to pitch to potential investors: everything from hydrogen fuel-cell cars to affordable advertising design, ‘dark pool’ forex trading and AI-drive geopolitical forecasting. The sponsor was the Worshipful Company of Entrepreneurs, which ranks 112th in City livery precedence behind all manner of defunct medieval trades but, on this evidence, punches above its weight in promoting its modern cause.
A dearth of risk capital for British innovators has driven far too many in recent years into the hands of foreign buyers. Business Secretary Peter Kyle provoked some astonishment this week by saying he wants to be ‘aggressively ambitious’ in taking stakes in such ventures with taxpayers’ money – an ambition no one could seriously think appropriate for a government of ministers with near-zero business experience and an innate lefties’ suspicion of entrepreneurship.
If Kyle had attended the scale-up event, he might have learned how the City itself is trying to address the capital gap. The LSE advertises its new ‘private securities market’, facilitating equity auctions for unlisted companies as part of ‘a broader effort to strengthen the funding continuum’. Advancing more slowly is a campaign launched at Mansion House in 2023 to push London’s institutional investors into backing high-growth British companies. But the Master Entrepreneur (and recent lord mayor) Alastair King offered a killer statistic to illuminate the hill that remains to be climbed. One dollar in every $200 held in US pension funds is invested in venture capital; the equivalent figure for UK pension funds is £1 in every £14,000.
A key reason why that ratio won’t change in a hurry is the magnetic pull of US tech: flotations of SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic will attract another pile of British pension-fund money. Then there’s the decade-long downbeat view of our economic prospects that has led global institutions to minimise UK holdings of all kinds. If Peter Kyle really wants to be a scale-up catalyst, he should roll back the wave of Labour legislation that has reinforced that pessimistic judgment and made it so much more difficult to build any kind of business here.
Not so sweet parting
Yet another famous British brand passes into American hands: Tate & Lyle, the household name behind Golden Syrup and Mr Cube, created by the 1921 merger of rival sugar refiners descended from Henry Tate of Liverpool and Abram Lyle of Glasgow and brought together in a landmark factory at Silvertown in east London. But that was already history: the sugar and syrup business was sold in 2010 to another US buyer. What was snapped up this week, for £2.7 billion by a Chicago-based group called Ingredion, was the residual maker of Splenda artificial sweeteners and other food ingredients.
Listed since 1938, Tate & Lyle will now disappear from the FTSE 250. But given that the shares have been drooping for years and Ingredion’s offer represents a 60 per cent premium to the last market price, what’s to regret? Investors have access to a golden exit and if the wider social contribution of capitalism is measured by the philanthropy it pays for, we’ve all had the benefit of Henry Tate’s largesse since he established the Tate Gallery in 1897.
Yet, as with young companies seeking funds for growth, we should ask repeatedly why every British business with a decent product is a bargain for foreign buyers, especially from the US. We’re the undervalued underdog of the transatlantic capital market and it’s a problem that’s not getting better.
Tenner’s worth
Talkative taxi drivers are always and every-where the columnist’s friend. Uber for immigrant life-stories, traditional London cabbies as bellwethers of public opinion. On a recent Tube strike day, I struck gold with one of the latter. ‘D’you know that Douglas Murray?’ he began when I revealed my occupation. ‘Bloody brilliant.’ And off we crawled through lashing rain for a half-hour tour of the political horizon, of which the bullet points were reverence for Margaret Thatcher, contempt for Tony Blair and Nigel Farage, the looming crisis of public debt and Labour’s hostility to self-employed strivers, including black-cab owners.
My voice of reason provoked ever more pungent responses as the meter clicked towards £25. ‘Nah,’ said my new friend, ‘I enjoyed that so much, we’ll call it a tenner.’ As a parting shot I asked him to name one current politician he’d gladly see in Downing Street. You’ve probably guessed the answer. ‘Rupert Lowe, ’e’s the man.’ At the time of writing, Ladbrokes and Coral are offering 12-to-1 odds on Lowe’s party, Restore Britain, winning the most seats at the next general election. That’s got to be worth the 15 quid I saved on the fare.
Animal spirits
The Bank of England’s online public consultation (open until 3 July) on a bizarre shortlist of wildlife chosen to appear on the next series of banknotes – replacing Sir Winston Churchill, Jane Austen, J.M.W. Turner and Alan Turing – will relieve an obscure committee’s task of choosing famous faces that attract the least flak from diversity militants and their diehard opponents. But mischief-makers will spot secret messages anyway: the ‘basking shark’ as a provocation to speculators, the ‘European hedgehog’ as a welcome to Brussels.
Missing are squirrel, beaver, tortoise and rat, all traditionally associated with thrift and prudence, but perhaps the Bank is also afraid to lecture us subliminally on how we should behave with our money. It might be more useful to print a simple arithmetic primer on the back of the notes, to help those kids behind the Pret counter who are now so unfamiliar with cash that they freeze in fear at having to calculate correct change.
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