Britain will need to attract £1tn in investment if the Government is to achieve its target of 3% growth over the next decade, according to a report by former Legal & General boss Sir Nigel Wilson. The Capital Markets of Tomorrow, which was commissioned by Ministers as part of a push to revive the City, concludes the UK will need to unlock £100bn a year from domestic pension funds and revamp the structure of its capital markets to offset a “risk-off” culture that has stifled investment from top institutions and the British public over the past twenty or so years. Homegrown firms currently attract “limited investment” from large UK institutions, Wilson found, while retail share ownership among UK households has plummeted by half. The average person needs to be “tempted” back into the stock market, he said. Wilson argued it was not that there was a shortage of cash available, saying there “has never been such a large amount of money globally available,” it was just that the UK now needed to tap into it. “Capital pools include domestic and international capital sources such as sovereign wealth funds, retail investment, private equity ‘dry powder’, and the UK is fortunate in that we have £6 trillion of long-term capital within our pension and insurance industries,” he said. “In other words, the supply of capital for growth is available.”  Mark Austin, who co-authored the report, told City A.M. the recommendations form part of an “ongoing journey” to revitalise the City and make the UK’s capital markets “match fit” again. City minister, Tulip Siddiq said in response to the report: “When the markets do well, our economy does well. Already this year, more than £20bn of equity capital has been raised in London – more than three times what was raised in the next three European exchanges combined – to support businesses to invest, innovate and grow”.

Meanwhile, however, Chancellor Rachel Reeves is being warned yet again that her planned tax raid on wealth is likely to backfire and deter investment, this time by Rob Lucas, the CEO of CVC Capital. He says her plans to increase Capital Gains Tax, tax overseas income earned by non-doms, and crackdown on private equity bonuses, risks triggering an exodus of financiers from the City, because executives who can afford to will move to cities elsewhere in the world with lower taxes.  “The international finance world is an incredibly dynamic world. People are moving all the time. Will it influence where some people want to be based? Probably, actually,” he told Private Equity News. He added: “A number of centres around the world have become very international, including London, and have attracted over the years a lot of international people. That has been a benefit to London and that’s been a benefit to the UK. At any given time, those individuals are thinking about whether they want to return to another market or return home and this is going on all the time. [Tax] is one influence that would play a part in any thinking around that.” CVC is the UK’s largest private equity firm, and the world’s fourth largest. It owns stakes in Six Nations rugby, Lipton Teas, and motoring organisation the RAC, and has 25 offices across five different continents including Madrid, Milan, Paris, New York and Singapore.

UK house prices reached a two-year high in August according to the Halifax, Britain’s largest mortgage lender. Prices were up 4.3% last month as compared to last year, taking the average cost of a UK property to £292,505, just shy of the June 2022 record when they reached £293,507. in the month, house prices rose by 0.3% in August, the Halifax said, compared to a 0.9% rise in July. The lender, which is owned by Lloyds Banking Group, said that buyers have been boosted after the Bank of England reduced interest rates at the beginning of August, in the first cut for four years.

Vistry Group, one of the UK’s largest housing developers is planning to take advantage of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s plans to relax planning laws and build tens of thousands of homes on green belt land. Vistry said the majority of the 75,000 plots in its so-called strategic land bank are on green belt sites, making it “uniquely positioned” to help deliver on Labour’s manifesto pledge to build 1.5m homes over the next five years. CEO Greg Fitzgerald said: “Our strategic land bank is more green and grey belt than brownfield land. We feel quite confident today, with the numbers that the Government is looking to [build], that an awful lot more of that will come through than would have done under the previous government.” However, he also said “billions of pounds” in Government funding was needed to boost affordable housebuilding, otherwise Labour will get “nowhere near” its target. “Housing associations over the next few years are going to need at least double what they’ve needed in the last programme, which finishes in 2026,” he said.

PwC has told its employees in a memo that it is going to start tracking their working locations to make sure they spend “a minimum of three days a week” in the office or at client sites, starting in January. The email, sent by the big four accounting firm to all its 26,000 UK employees, confirmed it will start monitoring how often employees work from home in the same way it monitors how many chargeable hours they work, to ensure they spend 60% of their time with clients or in the office. PwC described its new stance as a “shift” from a “hybrid working balance” towards “more in-person work,” according to the Financial Times. Managing partner Laura Hinton, who wrote the memo, said:  employees in the memo. “This will help to ensure that the new policy is being fairly and consistently “We all benefit from the positive impact of a hybrid approach, but the previous guidance of at least two to three days a week was open to interpretation.” In a statement to the Guardian, Hinton said: “Face-to-face working is hugely important to a people business like ours, and the new policy tips the balance of our working week into being located alongside clients and colleagues. At the same time, we continue to offer flexibility through hybrid working.” Londoners now work just 2.7 days a week in the office on average and have been slower to return to the office than those in other global cities such as Paris, Singapore and New York, research by the Centre for Cities thinktank revealed earlier this week.

Burberry will be booted out of the FTSE 100 after 15 years on the blue chip index, making way on 23^rd September for insurer Hiscox, which has seen its shares rise 13% in the pasts 12 months. The iconic luxury fashion brand, however, has seen its shares plummet 55%, and it has suspended dividend payments. Burberry has also announced that Joshua Schulman has been appointed as CEO and executive director, replacing Jonathan Akeroyd. Meanwhile, Hiscox's promotion means computer maker Raspberry Pi will join the FTSE 250. The London stock market indices are reshuffled by FTSE Russell every quarter according to the market valuation of each member in the previous month.

Cyclists should be expected to take out insurance to protect themselves and pedestrians, John Neal, the CEO of Lloyd’s of London has said, saying that it is not “such a daft idea” given a recent spate of serious accidents. Earlier this week, a drunk cyclist was spared jail earlier this week after he hit two women, causing injuries so severe one had to have a finger amputated. Neal, who describes himself as a “very keen cyclist”, said: “Having been knocked off my bicycle two and a half years ago, I know what it’s like to be hit by somebody. So I think you could do with a bit of protection as well.”

“I can’t comprehend why anybody would not wear a crash hat riding a bike. I just couldn’t comprehend why people would not do that,” he added. Currently, only mechanically-propelled vehicles are required to have insurance. The number if injuries sustained in collisions involving cyclists and pedestrians have more than doubled since 2005, to around 450 annually, and dangerous cycling laws were announced by the previous Conservative government but dropped ahead of the general election. The current Government has promised to introduce tougher laws targeting cyclists who kill and injure pedestrians. Lloyd’s, one of the world’s largest insurers, does not offer cycle insurance.

British oil giant Shell and the Norwegian state energy company Equinor have vowed to take on climate change activists in court in defence of the oil and gas exploration licences they were granted in the North Sea for their Jackdaw oil and Rosebank gas projects respectively.  In June, in a case brought by Greenpeace and Uplift, The Supreme Court ruled that emissions from the burning of fossil fuels must be considered when approving new drilling sites, giving the activists the go-ahead to launch a judicial review against the Jackdaw and Rosebank licences granted by the previous Conservative government. That government intended to defend its grant of licences, but the current Energy Secretary Ed Miliband confirmed last month that The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero will not challenge them to “save the taxpayer money,” leaving the two energy firms to step into the breach. Shell said in a statement: “From the outset, Jackdaw has been developed in line with all relevant consents and permits. At the judicial review, Shell will argue that those existing consents to develop Jackdaw should remain in place… Jackdaw is a vital project for UK energy security that is already well underway. Stopping the work is a highly complex process, with significant technical and safety issues now that infrastructure is in place and drilling has started in the North Sea. Jackdaw will provide fuel for UK customers – enough to heat 1.4m homes – strengthening energy independence for Britain, as other older gas fields reach the end of production”. Equinor said: “The Rosebank project is progressing according to plan. It is a vital project for the UK in terms of investment, job creation and energy security.” Ithaca Energy, which has a 20% stake in Rosebank, is expected to join the defence.

The first legally binding international AI treaty, delivered by The Council of Europe in May, was opened for signatories yesterday, with Britain, the US, and European Union members among the first to sign it. The AI Convention aims to ensure AI is developed to be consistent with human rights, democracy and the rule of law, thereby addressing the risks posed by the technology, while promoting responsible innovation. Among other measures, it requires states to carry out risk and impact assessments on the use of systems by public and private bodies. "This Convention is a major step to ensuring that these new technologies can be harnessed without eroding our oldest values, like human rights and the rule of law," Justice Minister Shabana Mahmood.  The King's speech in July confirmed “highly-targeted legislation” would be brought in regarding AI, with further announcements following “in due course”.

Five current and former AstraZeneca employees have been detailed by Chinese police as part of an investigation into possible breaches related to data privacy and importing unlicensed medications, according to Bloomberg, which says the detentions took place earlier this summer. The five are thought to be Chinese citizen who marketed cancer drugs for the oncology division of the British pharmaceutical company, drugs meant to treat liver cancer, but which had not been approved for distribution across mainland China. Police in the Shenzhen region are also believed to be examining the way the company collected patient data, and whether that may have broken China’s privacy laws. AstraZeneca said in a statement: “We are aware a small number of our employees in China are under investigation and we have no further information to share at this point.”

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