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UK Needs £1 Trillion to Boost Growth, London Executives Say - BLOOMBERG
(Bloomberg) -- The UK needs about £1 trillion of investment over the next decade in order to boost growth in the country, according to London business executives.
An extra £100 billion ($130 billion) of fresh investment every year would put the country on track to achieve 3% annual growth in real wages and real gross domestic product per capita, according to a report from the Capital Markets Industry Taskforce.
A litany of areas could use the extra spending, the report found. For instance, the country’s target to build 300,000 new homes every year would cost as much as £30 billion, while the water industry has said it needs an additional £8 billion of investment annually.
“The UK economy and its capital markets have fallen behind the US since the global financial crisis,” Nigel Wilson, former chief executive officer of Legal & General Group Plc and chair of “The Capital Markets of Tomorrow” report, said in the study. “However, there are many potential positives for the UK, and far from subscribing to ‘doom loop’ thinking, we are optimists.”
The report comes in the midst of a highly charged debate about London’s future as a financial center that got its start when the English chipmaker ARM Holdings Plc chose to go public in New York rather than London last year. Since then, lawmakers have been focused on what they can do to revive the country’s moribund capital markets, and British regulators recently overhauled their listing rules in an effort to make London more competitive with cities around the world.
“Capital markets will underpin our mission of sustained and meaningful economic growth,” City Minister Tulip Siddiq told financial-services firms at the London Stock Exchange on Friday.
The newly elected Labour government has made economic growth its central mission through a series of sweeping reforms to planning regulation and renewable-energy infrastructure. The Treasury is also reviewing how it can unlock billions of pounds of investment from pension funds.
The task force’s study warned lawmakers against becoming complacent about North American investors’ interest in investing in UK companies, noting that many high-growth British companies now have a large number of overseas investors on their boards.
Take Revolut Ltd., the digital bank that started in London in 2015. A recent secondary share sale that valued the company at $45 billion was led by three American investors — Coatue, D1 Capital Partners and existing backer Tiger Global.
“Whilst there is nothing wrong with this in principle, the UK should not underestimate the influence this has on the trajectories of these companies, including decisions to be acquired by a larger overseas company or choosing to IPO overseas,” the task force said.
The group encouraged lawmakers to consider ways they could create incentives for pensioners to invest in UK companies. The group also called on the government to lower or remove the stamp duty reserve tax, or SDRT.
“We also have to solve legacy problems,” the task force said. “The UK currently taxes its retail investors with SDRT when buying a UK-listed Aston Martin share but not when buying a German-listed Porsche share or US-listed Tesla share.”
The report included contributions from executives from firms and groups including Latham & Watkins LLP, TheCityUK, Hargreaves Lansdown Plc and UK Finance.
(Updates with city minister’s comment in sixth paragraph.)