More of Britain’s pension assets should be used to drive business growth
They are stuck in low-yielding bonds while companies are hungry for capital
Britain is a good place to be a budding entrepreneur. The country’s share of global venture-capital (vc) funding has doubled since 2018, to twice its share of global gdp. One out of every seven dollars the world invests in the earliest-stage “pre-seed” firms is invested in Britain. Although financial markets have taken a hammering this year, British vc funds have record amounts of unspent capital to throw at tomorrow’s winners.
But Britain is not a good place to turn promising startups into titans. There are many reasons for that, from Brexit to poor productivity. But a big stumbling block is that as British firms grow, the capital they need dries up along the way.
This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline “Tiddlers, not titans”
Leaders June 25th 2022
- How to fix the world’s energy emergency without wrecking the environment
- What Emmanuel Macron should learn from losing his majority
- A wave of unrest is coming. Here’s how to avert some of it
- How fighting inflation could imperil the euro zone
- More of Britain’s pension assets should be used to drive business growth
From the June 25th 2022 edition
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