Labour's Secretary of State for Business, Peter Kyle, joins us in the studio to answer some of the most pressing questions facing the UK economy: how does Britain position itself as a legitimate global destination for business, investment, and innovation?
“We have the potential to scale fast, but too often companies are leaving this country when they get to a need for a certain size of investment,” Kyle says on the show. “They're going to go and find that in America with a higher risk threshold, and they're gonna find a boldness and an urgency of getting capital into businesses. We have to have an environment here where that is met.”
While Labour may be keen to call itself a pro-growth government, there is no secret that the business community - from the small enterprises to the top chief executives - are deeply unimpressed. We ask how the government's relationship with the business community really going? \"There is a fundamental issue at the heart of this whole debate, and that's that until we get solid, sustained, sizeable growth into our economy ... Then no business as a sector is going to be able to move forward at the pace at which I would like.\"
And as the world's most valuable tech giants continue their march toward the public markets, the IPO pipeline is overwhelmingly American. SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI - the names generating the most excitement among investors are filing to list in New York. The NASDAQ continues to offer valuations that the London Stock Exchange simply cannot match. \"
\"I hope that the plus side for Britain when it comes to these big American IPOs is that it will create a sense of excitement about IPO' ing itself because, of course, most of the trend in recent years has gone from private investment into private companies,\" he says on the show. The London Stock Exchange is now doing a regular drumbeat of IPOs. It's now back in the business.\"
Presenters:
- Hannah Prevett, associate business editor of The Sunday Times
- Dominc O’Connell, Times columnist and Times Radio business reporter
Guest:
- Peter Kyle, Business Secretary
Producer: Hope Federico
Executive Producer: Miriam Hall
Photo credit: Getty
Get in touch: thebusiness@thetimes.com
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