<?xml encoding=”utf-8″ ?????????>
Rishi Sunak will trumpet £29.5 billion of new investment commitments in Britain as global chief executives and investors gather today at a government investment summit at Hampton Court Palace.
The government said the announcements, spanning renewable energy, technology, life sciences and infrastructure, would help to create more than 12,000 jobs.
The prime minister and senior colleagues will host more than 200 business leaders at the Surrey summit, including Stephen Schwarzman, of Blackstone, Amanda Blanc, of Aviva, David Solomon, of Goldman Sachs, and Jamie Dimon, of JP Morgan. It will be followed by a reception at Buckingham Palace hosted by the King.
A full list of attendees has not been published, but figures from China and Abu Dhabi are understood to have been invited. Trade ministers want to engage more with China amid splits within the Tory party over relations with Beijing.
The summit, sponsored by Barclays, HSBC and Lloyds Bank, comes as Sunak competes with the Labour Party to court business before a looming general election and as Britain faces competition overseas, particularly from the $369 billion American green stimulus package.
Sunak said: “Attracting global investment is at the heart of my plan for growing the economy.”
Jeremy Hunt announced plans last week to make permanent a multibillion-pound tax break, a key part of the autumn statement, and Nissan, the Japanese carmaker, revealed a £2 billion investment on Friday in its Sunderland car plant, the largest in the country, to produce two new electric models and to build a third battery factory.
One of the biggest of the 12 investments cited by the government today includes Aware Super, an Australian pension fund, which has committed to invest A$10 billion (£5.2 billion) in the UK and Europe from its new London office. Aware Super bought a 22 per cent stake this spring in Get Living, the build-to-rent developer and operator that owns the former Olympic village in Stratford, east London, from Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund.
Other investments cited by the government include IFM Investors, another Australian investor, which is due to sign a memorandum of understanding at the summit with the Department for Business and Trade to identify infrastructure and energy transition projects over the next four years and is seeking to invest £10 billion.
The last summit in 2021 was hosted by Boris Johnson, who was then prime minister, and was attended by Bill Gates at the Science Museum in London. Most of the £9.7 billion of investment announced then came from a £6 billion scheme by ScottishPower, owned by Iberdrola, of Spain, to build three wind farms off the coast of East Anglia.
The government will say today that Iberdrola plans to invest a further £7 billion between 2026 and 2028. Most of that will be on electricity transmission and networks and projects such as a subsea transmission cable to be built between East Lothian and Co Durham.
The Department for Business and Trade has convened an expert panel led by Professor Vanessa Knapp, a company law expert, to explore options to make it easier for foreign companies to relocate to the UK.
