A number one group of City figures are urging the chancellor to speed up pensions reform, hand a competitiveness goal to the audit watchdog and incentivise retail buyers to again British firms “at a critical pivot point… [for] the economy”.
Sky News has seen a letter from the Capital Markets Industry Taskforce (CMIT), an influential panel chaired by Julia Hoggett, the London Stock Exchange chief government, which calls on Jeremy Hunt to advance his monetary providers programme in subsequent week’s autumn assertion.
In the wide-ranging letter, CMIT warned that British firms have been being starved of home funding, saying: “The UK has remarkable companies and remarkable potential, but we do not invest in ourselves.”
CMIT, which was established final yr to strengthen the aggressive place of Britain’s capital markets amid issues that fast-growing firms are more and more being tempted to listing abroad, consists of the chairman of GlaxoSmithKline and chief executives of Phoenix Group and Schroders amongst its members.
In its letter to Mr Hunt, the taskforce mentioned that Britain now noticed far decrease home funding by UK-based pension funds in home capital markets than different G7 nations.
“Capital markets exist to finance the economy, they are founded in many jurisdictions across the world on a strong domestic investor base that invests in its own economy and is incentivised to do so,” the letter mentioned.
While nations comparable to Canada, Japan and France have been considerably obese when evaluating their allocation to equities to the dimensions of their very own inventory markets, the UK is now considerably underweight, CMIT mentioned.
It added that the difficulty was not restricted to public markets, telling the chancellor that in 2021, a Canadian pension fund invested extra in a single UK non-public firm than all the UK pensions trade invested in all UK non-public firms in the identical yr.
One member of CMIT informed Sky News that the state of affairs had turn into “urgent” and required quick consideration from the Treasury to construct on pension reforms unveiled in Mr Hunt’s Mansion House speech earlier this yr.
The situation has acquired higher impetus as a consequence of firms comparable to Flutter Entertainment, the FTSE-100 playing group, asserting that it will transfer its major itemizing to the US.
Meanwhile, ARM Holdings, the chip designer, has floated in New York somewhat than London, regardless of being a British know-how champion.
The CMIT letter warned Mr Hunt that this pattern was prone to proceed with out “proactive policy” making an attempt to halt it.
“The withdrawal of domestic capital starves our companies of financing, diverts UK tax-payer support to investments in non-domestic companies and ultimately impacts the efficacy of our markets,” it mentioned.
“It also disproportionately impacts smaller and medium sized companies listed on our markets.”
CMIT argued that the Financial Reporting Council needs to be handed a proper competitiveness goal, complementing these of the City and banking watchdogs.
“This will ensure that the future design of our corporate governance and stewardship regimes takes into account not just good governance and stewardship, but also the attractiveness of the UK capital markets for both existing and potential domestic and international issuers, as well as domestic and international investors,” it added.
The taskforce inspired Mr Hunt to finish his Mansion House reforms within the autumn assertion by facilitating the consolidation of outlined contribution pension schemes, and establishing a ‘British ISA’ that will incentivise retail savers to spend money on UK-based firms.
It mentioned an impartial knowledgeable needs to be requested to compile a report monitoring the extent of UK pension fund funding in home firms.
Source: information.sky.com”