The Positive Brexit Thread

[dylanisabaddog 4,971]

16 hours ago, ricardo said:

I'd happily take a bet with you YF but I won't  be here to collect or pay up.😉

Please start training Grandson to do match reports! 

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

Mr Johnson was speaking at a conference in London and asked for a show of hands as to whether they thought leaving the European Union had worked out – and almost no-one raised their hand.

As the conference host asked the crowd to raise their hands if they thought Brexit was a good idea, Mr Johnson said: ‘I got the feeling that might be the case as we went along, but I’m undaunted.’

When does he ever do any work? He never goes to the chamber. And he never seems to be in his office.

[dylanisabaddog 4,971]

Johnson has just said he is considering voting against the Windsor Framework. I despair. 

[nevermind, neoliberalism has had it 159]

Liar Johnson has the right wing Tory party behind him and is planning his comeback to politics, ideally as the replacement for Sunak, who policies he opposes.

NI is now the only part of this far too long in the tooth union that has an agreement on the table that should restore the elected reps to Stormont and introduce EU rights and trading to them.

To an aghast Scotland Wales and England businesses who are now beginning to question the referendum and subsequent moves to leave the EU/US. He wants to oppose those in NI who are feeling a breath of fresh air blowing through these convoluted machinations of a Tory party with no mandate, Conservatives who effectively dissing the good Friday Agreement, denying NI its frozen Government and open the door to DUP paramilitaries to start the troubles all over again.

This media dream of a high powered election squabble between Johnson and Starmer should really be put on ice, but sadly, the public has no choice between these two pirates.

[benchwarmer 625]

5 hours ago, dylanisabaddog said:

Johnson has just said he is considering voting against the Windsor Framework. I despair. 

He's running it up the flagpole to see how the Tory Party membership reacts. 

After the Liz Truss fiasco they were excluded from voting for her successor.  They're very pi**ed off and some would like to bring Sunak down, if only to show who's boss. 

He clearly hasn't given up on returning to the top job, but Starmer has already said Labour will vote for the WF so Johnson and his ilk can, frankly, go and do one.

Edited March 2, 2023 by benchwarmer

[Yellow Fever 3,818]

8 hours ago, PurpleCanary said:

I like this idea, especially as Longwood House is owned by the French government and is a museum to Napoleon. BoJo the Charlatan could end his days as an exhibit, symbolising "Complete Downfall Into Object of Mockery".

I knew somebody else would get it. I just thought exile and then by magic St Helena and (toxic) wallpaper. What could be better & most apt 😉

 

 

[A Load of Squit 5,211]

41 minutes ago, dylanisabaddog said:

Johnson has just said he is considering voting against the Windsor Framework. I despair. 

Windsor Knot.

 

[Hook's-Walk-Canary 213]

A good result from Sunak's post-Brexit pact with the EU is that it's hastened the UK's bid to join the CPTPP with a deal expected within weeks 👍

https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-expected-to-get-greenlight-to-join-asia-pacific-trade-pact-deal-in-days/

 

And that will be the end of Rejoiniac hopes of rejoining the EU. Finished, goodbye, gone, finito, zilch.. 

[littleyellowbirdie 2,582]

33 minutes ago, Hook's-Walk-Canary said:

A good result from Sunak's post-Brexit pact with the EU is that it's hastened the UK's bid to join the CPTPP with a deal expected within weeks 👍

https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-expected-to-get-greenlight-to-join-asia-pacific-trade-pact-deal-in-days/

I would love to know how involved Japan has been in our rapprochement with the EU; they have extremely good relations with Germany especially (look at the quality of their bilateral trade agreement with the EU) and they've been very keen to get us into CPTPP to add weight to the project.

 

[Hook's-Walk-Canary 213]

20 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

I would love to know how involved Japan has been in our rapprochement with the EU.

It's in the article, birdie:

'Japan — which has been leading the U.K.’s accession process — had been “very closely watching” negotiations between Britain and the EU to resolve the dispute, said a Japanese diplomat.

That’s because the Northern Ireland protocol — which introduced checks on trade from Great Britain to Northern Ireland post-Brexit — is baked into the U.K.’s trade deals with Australia, New Zealand and Japan.'

 

[littleyellowbirdie 2,582]

25 minutes ago, Hook's-Walk-Canary said:

It's in the article, birdie:

'Japan — which has been leading the U.K.’s accession process — had been “very closely watching” negotiations between Britain and the EU to resolve the dispute, said a Japanese diplomat.

That’s because the Northern Ireland protocol — which introduced checks on trade from Great Britain to Northern Ireland post-Brexit — is baked into the U.K.’s trade deals with Australia, New Zealand and Japan.'

 

So reading between the lines, the EU's invested in building a relationship with CPTPP, even going as far as facilitating its development.

[Hook's-Walk-Canary 213]

31 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

So reading between the lines, the EU's invested in building a relationship with CPTPP, even going as far as facilitating its development.

Facilitating its developement, but the EU still needs to get its skates on. The more CPTPP expands, the greater the benefits to the UK as it enjoys tariff-free trade with a greater range of countries 👍

[littleyellowbirdie 2,582]

1 minute ago, Hook's-Walk-Canary said:

Facilitating its developement, but the EU still needs to get its skates on. The more CPTPP expands, the greater the benefits to the UK as it enjoys tariff-free trade with a greater range of countries 👍

I genuinely don't think there's going to be any adversarial competition between CPTPP and the EU. Japan and the EU are on brilliant terms and, as Yellow Fever pointed out, after the US left CPTPP, CPTPP is very much Japan's baby as its vehicle for improving its economic influence.

The need to preserve peace in Northern Ireland necessitates that we have a close relationship with the EU all the while Northern Ireland remains a part of the UK.

I sort of agreed with the rejoiners to an extent when Sunak was selling the benefits of the new NI agreement; they're right that NI effectively has now what the UK had before we left. What I think they've missed is that NI is going to have SM/CU one way and CPTPP the other, which is pretty awesome, especially if CPTPP takes off.

 

[Herman 9,819]

 

[littleyellowbirdie 2,582]

20 minutes ago, Herman said:

 

There was a piece on this on Radio 4 yesterday.

It's a blow, and leaving the EU may be part of the story, but it's a long way from the whole story.

Much like the tomato shortage, simplifying everything to 'it's because of Brexit' doesn't really add anything.

https://biz.crast.net/ex-chancellor-warns-london-is-now-less-attractive-after-arm-move/

Edited March 4, 2023 by littleyellowbirdie

[Creative Midfielder 2,002]

26 minutes ago, Herman said:

 

As he says this is definitely a Brexit story and I think it was always the inevitable outcome despite the Stock Exchange's and Sunak's attempts to woo them to London - both have been looking needy and pretty desperate for several years now, offering up rule changes in attempting to attract major companies to list in London which if anything seems to have backfired.

And of course others that are\were in London are also drifting away...https://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2023/mar/02/the-london-market-needs-a-plan-to-avoid-irrelevance-not-endless-consultations

[littleyellowbirdie 2,582]

19 minutes ago, Creative Midfielder said:

As he says this is definitely a Brexit story and I think it was always the inevitable outcome despite the Stock Exchange's and Sunak's attempts to woo them to London - both have been looking needy and pretty desperate for several years now, offering up rule changes in attempting to attract major companies to list in London which if anything seems to have backfired.

And of course others that are\were in London are also drifting away...https://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2023/mar/02/the-london-market-needs-a-plan-to-avoid-irrelevance-not-endless-consultations

It's really interesting how people favour tweets for pushing these sorts of arguments over actual thorough stories.

Yes, these are partly due to Brexit, but equally, London's performance needs to be put into the context that we're currently nowhere on integration either with the EU or CPTPP. The EU has actually gone out of its way to deny the UK equivalences that many non-EU countries enjoy while we've had bad relations. Now relations are on the up, it's very plausible that we'll come to accomodations that improve London's ability to work with the EU market and make London more competitive again, aside from London's own domestic reforms.

I was watching Peter Zeihan last night, who's an American geopolitical analyst who argued that the UK would end up part of NAFTA, but have to pay some huge prices to the US for doing so. One of those prices, he argued, would be the UK ditching Airbus and going with Boeing, which would leave Airbus in a corner regarding a large part of the sources of its aerospace technology. It would also weaken the EU, strengthen the US, and leave us more dependent on the US.

That is exactly why we don't want to finish up too much in bed with America, although more in bed with it than Russia and China, and we do want to support both the EU and other middle powers like Japan, Canada, and Australia in making international trade as smooth-flowing as possible without being dominated by superpowers like China, Russia and the US playing their games.

The picture painted of an isolated UK post-Brexit is so spectacularly wrong.

 

Edited March 4, 2023 by littleyellowbirdie

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

10 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

It's really interesting how people favour tweets for pushing these sorts of arguments over actual thorough stories.

Yes, these are partly due to Brexit, but equally, London's performance needs to be put into the context that we're currently nowhere on integration either with the EU or CPTPP. The EU has actually gone out of its way to deny the UK equivalences that many non-EU countries enjoy while we've had bad relations. Now relations are on the up, it's very plausible that we'll come to accomodations that improve London's ability to work with the EU market and make London more competitive again, aside from London's own domestic reforms.

I was watching Peter Zeihan last night, who's an American geopolitical analyst who argued that the UK would end up part of NAFTA, but have to pay some huge prices to the US for doing so. One of those prices, he argued, would be the UK ditching Airbus and going with Boeing, which would leave Airbus in a corner regarding a large part of the sources of its aerospace technology. It would also weaken the EU, strengthen the US, and leave us more dependent on the US.

That is exactly why we don't want to finish up too much in bed with America, although more in bed with it than Russia and China, and we do want to support both the EU and other middle powers like Japan, Canada, and Australia in making international trade as smooth-flowing as possible without being dominated by superpowers like China, Russia and the US playing their games.

The picture painted of an isolated UK post-Brexit is so spectacularly wrong.

 

Thing is LYB, you have just painted a picture that adequately illustrates how wrong Brexit was. Yes, there was always a danger to London but Brexit exposed it unnecessarily.

[Yellow Fever 3,818]

1 hour ago, Herman said:

 

Its the comments and full tweet by Grey and the the founder of ARM that are most enlightening.

I've extracted a bit more here

Hermann Hauser, founder of Arm: ‘Brexit is the biggest loss of sovereignty since 1066’ | Technology sector | The Guardian

Frankly is the reality of Brexit not the myth. What do people say - follow the money!

Edited March 4, 2023 by Yellow Fever

[littleyellowbirdie 2,582]

1 hour ago, keelansgrandad said:

Thing is LYB, you have just painted a picture that adequately illustrates how wrong Brexit was. Yes, there was always a danger to London but Brexit exposed it unnecessarily.

Those who paint it as 'wrong' only look at it through the economic lens, refusing to acknowledge the political question of EU membership that many very reasonable people weren't happy with.

Either way, right or wrong, it's done yet it's still being simplified by some into the rights and wrongs of the decision to leave, which is yesterday's debate under the pretense that we haven't yet left the EU, even to the extent of naked changes of the definition of Brexit from the process of leaving the EU to somehow forever defining our bilateral relationship with the EU post-Brexit.

There is clear opportunity that has grown out of leaving the EU in the opportunity we now have to shape the relationship between the EU and CPTPP, where we simultaneously have a motive to make that relationship as close as possible, while having the leverage of the size of the market to consider and the simplification of dealing with a multilateral trade agreement over dealing with countries individually, and the observation that the EU has been motivated to improve relations with us with a view to letting CPTPP move forward indicating that this is very much a viable strategy for most people to finish up happy with the outcome.

To be honest, I'm very much enjoying the fact that all the points I made about CPTPP being a route back to a better relationship with the EU that were so widely ridiculed and mocked here seem to be being borne out.

 

 

Edited March 4, 2023 by littleyellowbirdie

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

10 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

I don't agree. Equally, those who paint it as 'wrong' only look at it through the economic lens, refusing to acknowledge the political question of EU membership that many very reasonable people weren't happy with.

Either way, right or wrong, it's done yet it's still being simplified by some into the rights and wrongs of the decision to leave, which is yesterday's debate under the pretense that we haven't yet left the EU, even to the extent of naked changes of the definition of Brexit from the process of leaving the EU to somehow forever defining our bilateral relationship with the EU post-Brexit.

There is clear opportunity that has grown out of leaving the EU in the opportunity we now have to shape the relationship between the EU and CPTPP, where we simultaneously have a motive to make that relationship as closse as possible, while having the leverage of the size of the market to consider and the simplification of dealing with a multilateral trade agreement over dealing with countries individually, and the observation that the EU has been motivated to improve relations with us with a view to letting CPTPP move forward indicating that this is very much a viable strategy for most people to finish up happy with the outcome.

 

 

Are you saying that the debate should stop as to whether the decision was right or wrong? That can't be right. 

Its irrelevant to the right or wrong argument about what the new opportunities are. 

[littleyellowbirdie 2,582]

Just now, keelansgrandad said:

Are you saying that the debate should stop as to whether the decision was right or wrong? That can't be right. 

Its irrelevant to the right or wrong argument about what the new opportunities are. 

Are you saying that it's fair to characterise a thread dominated by rejoin headbangers going on and on about why we shouldn't have left the EU in the first place, who get demonstrably upset by any actual conversation of opportunities post-Brexit and accuse people who look for positives on the positive-Brexit thread of 'trolling',as a debate?

[Herman 9,819]

2 hours ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

 

"It's a blow, and leaving the EU may be part of the story, but it's a long way from the whole story." 

As Chris Grey points out, with numerous links. 

"Much like the tomato shortage, simplifying everything to 'it's because of Brexit' doesn't really add anything." 

Nobody ever said it was simply to do with Brexit. We all point out that it has made a big problem much bigger. 

 

 

Edited March 4, 2023 by Herman

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

46 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

Are you saying that it's fair to characterise a thread dominated by rejoin headbangers going on and on about why we shouldn't have left the EU in the first place, who get demonstrably upset by any actual conversation of opportunities post-Brexit and accuse people who look for positives on the positive-Brexit thread of 'trolling',as a debate?

I am not singling out this thread. I am talking about the debate in general. It isn't over. Brexit is still not done according to the ERG or DUP. And all I keep hearing from Leavers like Dorries yesterday is "surely we should have found a solution by now?"

Rejoining, I admit, is really not an option yet. And so we have to explore new opportunities. Which is likely to be left to a Labour Government who voted in strength to Remain.

The argument is not over.

[littleyellowbirdie 2,582]

20 minutes ago, Herman said:

 

It's true, but my point is it's out of the equation as far as what you do about it, which makes it pointless to fixate on it over and above all of the other factors.

[littleyellowbirdie 2,582]

10 minutes ago, keelansgrandad said:

I am not singling out this thread. I am talking about the debate in general. It isn't over. Brexit is still not done according to the ERG or DUP. And all I keep hearing from Leavers like Dorries yesterday is "surely we should have found a solution by now?"

Rejoining, I admit, is really not an option yet. And so we have to explore new opportunities. Which is likely to be left to a Labour Government who voted in strength to Remain.

The argument is not over.

The ERG desperately want to keep Brexit alive because it's the source of their power and influence. Once the NI agreement is approved, they're dead as a political force.

The DUP's more complicated, but they have a difficult line to tread as if they finish up rejecting a workable arrangement that they can sell then they can potentially finish up alienating a large chunk of their voters.

Rejoining will never be an option; the fact that Japan has successfully helped broker agreement with the EU on very fair terms over NI to faciliate our entry into CPTPP underlines that the EU has moved on and is okay with helping us move on and allow us to pursue mutual interests.

A very very close agreement between CPTPP and the EU, on the other hand, that allows us to get back a lot of the benefits of EU membership without rejoining, is achievable.

On top of that, there's the option of bilateral agreement with EU countries down the line. Even though the Republic of Ireland is still in the EU, British Citizens still have the right to live and work there without restriction.

Edited March 4, 2023 by littleyellowbirdie

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

9 hours ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

The ERG desperately want to keep Brexit alive because it's the source of their power and influence. Once the NI agreement is approved, they're dead as a political force.

The DUP's more complicated, but they have a difficult line to tread as if they finish up rejecting a workable arrangement that they can sell then they can potentially finish up alienating a large chunk of their voters.

Rejoining will never be an option; the fact that Japan has successfully helped broker agreement with the EU on very fair terms over NI to faciliate our entry into CPTPP underlines that the EU has moved on and is okay with helping us move on and allow us to pursue mutual interests.

A very very close agreement between CPTPP and the EU, on the other hand, that allows us to get back a lot of the benefits of EU membership without rejoining, is achievable.

On top of that, there's the option of bilateral agreement with EU countries down the line. Even though the Republic of Ireland is still in the EU, British Citizens still have the right to live and work there without restriction.

The ERG will not go away. They have half the cabinet. And when Labour wins the next GE, unless many of them lose their jobs, they will make things even harder for a Tory Party that will be looking to reform.

[Well b back 3,274]

I don’t come on this thread often now as the bird said this thread should no longer exist. I come back only to find almost 2 out of every 3 posts are by the bird. 

[Well b back 3,274]

And the truth of the matter

London’s calling falls on deaf ears for firms looking to list

Billions of pounds is draining out of the City and the damage could be hard to repair

Once a company’s listing moves out of London the head office could follow, and then the entire system of bankers, lawyers, accountants and consultants is affected too.

Shifting listings to Wall Street seems all the rage. This week CRH, the London-listed building materials group, announced plans to defect to New York in a move under which it will lose its FTSE 100 membership. Then Arm Holdings, the UK-based chip designing colossus, said it had opted for New York for its long-awaited listing, snubbing its pre-2016 home of the London market.

They are not the only ones. Pershing Square Holdings, the only hedge fund business in the FTSE 100, signalled last month it might switch to the US. Shell, the energy giant, it emerged this week, had explored a transatlantic switch.

 

Attitudes to high executive rewards are far more relaxed in the US too. “If you are a founder, you are going to do much better in the US,” said one frustrated City lobbyist. For the increasing numbers of country-hopping blue-chip executives with no particular allegiance to the UK, the temptation to shift to America is strong.

There’s another factor at play too. UK-based companies can still list in New York but the only way to get into the important US indices is by getting incorporated and moving the head office there too. Membership of the most important index, the S&P 500, depends on a complicated mix of factors, but head office location and place of incorporation is usually seen as essential.

Sir Keith Skeoch, a long-time City investment figure and former co-chief executive of Standard Life Aberdeen, now Abrdn, agrees this is about far more than the site of a listing.

“It’s even more important that you get economic substance here and that corporate headquarters are in the UK, or manufacturing and service provision is here,” he said. “I’m afraid that has been in long-term decline and there hasn’t been much to arrest it. You are seeing the cumulative impact of all of that. Plus, if you are thinking about raising capital, where do you go in the world? We’re just not top of the list any more.”

Politics has further damaged the international appeal of Britain, from Brexit to the mini-budget fiasco which led to the fall of Liz Truss.

Symbolically, the moves, real and potential, are a blow for the City of London. “It is disappointing,” says Charles Hall, head of research at the London broker Peel Hunt. “It is a worrying trend. But it’s not that surprising.”

Of itself, the listings switch is minor, largely affecting the fees earned by London based brokers, though it is reputationally damaging.

But the flight to the American stock market has also coincided with another large trend, the buying of London-listed companies by firms that are mostly North American, and mostly private equity backed. Morrisons, the supermarket group, was the most high profile, but companies that have lost their London listings as a result of takeovers include Cobham, Meggitt, Ultra Electronics, Micro Focus and Avast.

The City of London’s perceived decline has been hastened by a recent dearth of IPOs. The London market played host to only 19 issues last year compared with 79 in New York, according to Refinitiv data. Hong Kong played host to 67 public offerings.

 

Billions of pounds worth of market value, and potential value, have disappeared from London and with it huge amounts of potential trading volume.

But the danger is greater than that, according to Hall. While listing-switching companies might insist their head office and operations will remain in the UK, the reality is that the companies inevitably tilt towards the markets where they have their primary listings. Once the head office moves, the entire system of bankers, lawyers, accountants and consultants of all shapes moves too.

“It’s a sop,” says Hall. “The reality is your chief executive, your finance director and your investor relations chief are more likely to base themselves in the US. There’s a definite tilting of the business towards the US. It may take ten years [to move the head office as well] but that’s the direction of travel.”

The magnetic pull is great because of two potent forces — the higher valuations put on US-listed companies and the more generous attitude to executive reward. US companies routinely trade on higher multiples of profits than their UK counterparts. Anyone shifting a listing hopes for a pleasant one-off bump higher in the share price. Ferguson, the plumbing products group once known as Wolseley, a former FTSE 100 constituent, has soared on the back of its transatlantic push.

CRH says its move is purely to do with boosting its reputation and standing with US customers, who account for three quarters of its profits, and nothing to do with valuation. But Hall, while not referring to CRH, is sceptical: “They may say it’s nothing to do with valuation; it’s all to do with valuation.”

 

Attitudes to high executive rewards are far more relaxed in the US too. “If you are a founder, you are going to do much better in the US,” said one frustrated City lobbyist. For the increasing numbers of country-hopping blue-chip executives with no particular allegiance to the UK, the temptation to shift to America is strong.

There’s another factor at play too. UK-based companies can still list in New York but the only way to get into the important US indices is by getting incorporated and moving the head office there too. Membership of the most important index, the S&P 500, depends on a complicated mix of factors, but head office location and place of incorporation is usually seen as essential.

Sir Keith Skeoch, a long-time City investment figure and former co-chief executive of Standard Life Aberdeen, now Abrdn, agrees this is about far more than the site of a listing.

“It’s even more important that you get economic substance here and that corporate headquarters are in the UK, or manufacturing and service provision is here,” he said. “I’m afraid that has been in long-term decline and there hasn’t been much to arrest it. You are seeing the cumulative impact of all of that. Plus, if you are thinking about raising capital, where do you go in the world? We’re just not top of the list any more.”

Politics has further damaged the international appeal of Britain, from Brexit to the mini-budget fiasco which led to the fall of Liz Truss.

 

 

“What went on in the autumn and the issues prior to that, that political instability is not helpful. It’s not something that people want to see,” Skeoch says. “People also want to see regula- tory stability. One of the problems for the UK is the rules and regulations have changed quite a lot and there’s a prospect of further change coming down the track.”

Securities experts agree that London can be less attractive than some other centres. First there are the prospectus and listing rules, which deter founders who want to retain control and often do not have sufficiently long track records. There are further restrictions, such as disclosure on related party transactions, a stumbling block that reportedly deterred Arm. Second, corporate governance rules and their interpretation by powerful proxy voting agencies can tip the balance against London. Flash points range from executive pay to the make-up of non-executive directors.

The Arm disappointment has fed fresh political unease about Britain’s failure to win big tech listings. Darren Jones, the Labour chairman of the business select committee, said: “We’ve known for many years that we have a problem sourcing the level of UK based capital businesses need from scaling up to big tech listings. The prime minister has been promising reforms in this area for many years. Where are they?”

 

Miles Celic, chief executive of the TheCityUK, which lobbies on behalf of the wholesale finance industry, says the situation is challenging, “but we have to be careful not to move too far towards unwarranted doom-mongering.” He is encouraged by a string of reforms coming along after the Hill Review and then the government’s Edinburgh proposals.

Some of these are designed to make floating in London more attractive and less onerous, though some shareholders warn they could lead to an erosion in standards if not carefully implemented. The setbacks at newly floated businesses such as THG, Made.com and Deliveroo are fresh in the memory.

Others see them as too marginal to offset the pull of Wall Street. But Celic insists they are “not just tinkering” but added together “constitute a significant package of reforms”. And anyway, he adds, too drastic changes would be counterproductive. There was a risk of “regulatory exhaustion” if there were “juddering changes” to the rules, he said.

Underlying much of the concern is the argument that investors in Britain have become too risk averse. According to the Investor Forum, the proportion of FTSE 100 companies owned by UK pension funds and insurers fell from 52 per cent to 4 per cent in the 30 years to 2020. Overseas holdings rose from 12 per cent to 56 per cent. “Fundamentally, you’ve got no long-term capital residing in the UK,” says Peter Harrison, chief executive of Schroders.

The pension funds argue that their retreat from the UK is rational, giving them far greater diversification benefits and far higher returns. Their liking of low-risk bonds is logical, given their extremely mature member base.

 

Defined contribution schemes have also largely shunned the UK, allocating according to industry benchmarks, which inevitably push them into US stocks. Nine of the ten biggest investments of Nest, the default government-backed scheme with more than 10 million members, are US companies, headed by Apple, Microsoft and Alphabet. No UK blue chip makes the top ten. Members might be surprised they are not backing UK companies more, but the emphasis on US stocks has certainly boosted their pots in the past decade.

It is 14 months since Sir Paul Marshall, the hedge fund manager, declared London “a sort of Jurassic Park” of risk-averse dividend collectors. Since then, however, the UK dinosaurs have done rather better than Wall Street. The valuation gap has narrowed a bit and could narrow further. London’s extreme discomfort today may yet be seen as partly a product of the times.

One senior City figure says the hand-wringing may be overdone. After all, it was only in 2021 that London boasted record numbers of initial public offerings and the largest amount of capital raised by any financial centre outside the US and China. Only yesterday, a Saudi luxury property developer, the £600 million Dar Global, made its debut with a primary listing in London. There are new entrants through the revolving door as well as leavers.

[littleyellowbirdie 2,582]

10 hours ago, keelansgrandad said:

The ERG will not go away. They have half the cabinet. And when Labour wins the next GE, unless many of them lose their jobs, they will make things even harder for a Tory Party that will be looking to reform.

https://bylinetimes.com/2022/11/21/european-research-group-loses-two-thirds-of-its-paid-up-members/

They're already struggling to justify their existence.