He has since secured the agreement of nine of the biggest defined contribution pension providers to direct 5pc of their default funds to unlisted companies by 2030.
If that didn’t sound the alarm bell, then perhaps a new report by think tank Onward last week might. So-called pension power was intended to put some lead in the Chancellor’s pencil.
“The UK has had a pensions investment problem for too long,” Onward’s report begins, citing chancellor Gordon Brown’s 2000 Budget speech in which he said: “Britain as a whole has lagged behind America in business access to venture capital (VC) investment.”
With his next breath, Brown announced the Myners Review. However, his speech was delivered on March 10 and what happened next? Let Time magazine explain: “The crash began March 11. In less than a month, nearly a trillion dollars worth of stock value had completely evaporated. Stocks sunk. Companies folded. Fortunes were lost, and the American economy started to slip down a slow mudslide that would end up in full-on recession.”
By the time Myners reported back a year later, the idea that we could trust the architects of the dotcom bubble with our nest eggs was preposterous.
Did the VC sector emerge from the crash more sober and reflective? You must be joking. When interest rates fell to zero, funds were inflated by desperate investors. And so the firms created ever more implausible and reckless fads: the “sharing economy”, blockchain, Web3, and crypto finance, to name a few.
The young policy cadres of SW1 have a startling lack of curiosity about recent history. Onward also complains that “less than half of Britain’s most innovative firms reach their second funding round, compared to 63pc of American ones”.
And yet there may be good reasons for this. Perhaps we generate far fewer viable companies worth investing in. Or perhaps we have a more promiscuous VC culture. The tax system incentivises people to dabble, providing some initial seed funding, but far fewer go further into Series A rounds. Whatever the reason, none of this is really a problem for the pension industry, which exists to serve its customers, and should decide how best to do it.
Beware Britain’s pensions grab
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He has since secured the agreement of nine of the biggest defined contribution pension providers to direct 5pc of their default funds to unlisted companies by 2030.
If that didn’t sound the alarm bell, then perhaps a new report by think tank Onward last week might. So-called pension power was intended to put some lead in the Chancellor’s pencil.
“The UK has had a pensions investment problem for too long,” Onward’s report begins, citing chancellor Gordon Brown’s 2000 Budget speech in which he said: “Britain as a whole has lagged behind America in business access to venture capital (VC) investment.”
With his next breath, Brown announced the Myners Review. However, his speech was delivered on March 10 and what happened next? Let Time magazine explain: “The crash began March 11. In less than a month, nearly a trillion dollars worth of stock value had completely evaporated. Stocks sunk. Companies folded. Fortunes were lost, and the American economy started to slip down a slow mudslide that would end up in full-on recession.”
By the time Myners reported back a year later, the idea that we could trust the architects of the dotcom bubble with our nest eggs was preposterous.
Did the VC sector emerge from the crash more sober and reflective? You must be joking. When interest rates fell to zero, funds were inflated by desperate investors. And so the firms created ever more implausible and reckless fads: the “sharing economy”, blockchain, Web3, and crypto finance, to name a few.
The young policy cadres of SW1 have a startling lack of curiosity about recent history. Onward also complains that “less than half of Britain’s most innovative firms reach their second funding round, compared to 63pc of American ones”.
And yet there may be good reasons for this. Perhaps we generate far fewer viable companies worth investing in. Or perhaps we have a more promiscuous VC culture. The tax system incentivises people to dabble, providing some initial seed funding, but far fewer go further into Series A rounds. Whatever the reason, none of this is really a problem for the pension industry, which exists to serve its customers, and should decide how best to do it.
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