I am very pleased to read of this from two friends – Will Hutton and Nick Lyons
Congratulations to the team at British Growth Partnership and BBB. But it is also a reminder that supply of long term patient capital still lags hugely the demand from great British businesses who remain dependent on overseas capital for so much of their accelerator capital.The Mansion House Compact was a powerful and important statement of intent by 11 pension managers representing two thirds of the DC market. But implementation has been frustratingly slow. We must move further and faster and find vehicles through which to enable this capital to flow to the best returns.
British Growth Partnership and Future Growth Capital, a jv between Schroders and Standard Life (declaration of interest: I chair SL) are two that have set out their stall but we need to have a clear roadmap about how others will deploy too. And we really need to accelerate…….
While we have been admiring the problem, the European Investment Fund has launched a €15 billion fund of funds to back growth stage companies including an ambitious European Tech Champions Initiative. This looks remarkably similar to the Future Growth Fund I proposed as Lord Mayor which I couldn’t get the MHC signatories to support and about which I was extensively quizzed by European ambassadors 🤔
Don’t get me wrong, I support all European tech and life science growth companies getting access to local funding and European pensioners having a chance to participate in those returns…….but this looks remarkably like someone eating our lunch. Otherwise we are just going to carry on watching great British companies make the inevitable choice: that they must follow the money and, in doing so, enrich the pensioners of North America and Australia.
Paul Hume , a retired civil servant had this to say. I agree with him as much as I’m sure Hutton and Lyons will.
It’s striking that as a collective, these vehicles still only control around £9bn — a tiny fraction of what’s needed if we’re serious about building a domestic growth engine. But there’s a deeper issue here. If we want long‑term, compounding returns, the most reliable investment the UK could make is reducing deprivation.
You can read a report on BBB’s position here
