Productive investment

“Water, water, everywhere – nor any drop to drink’: The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner

During this event, we will discuss our upcoming paper on ‘Productive investment’. This short paper is the first in a series of papers and events around the theme of ‘rebooting capital markets’ in the UK in the wake of Brexit. It contrasts the huge pools of long-term capital in the UK from pensions, insurance, retail investments and savings (of which the UK is rightly proud) with the tiny amount of patient capital and (surprisingly small) amount of productive investment. The paper asks how we can close that gap and put more of that long-term capital to work in the economy in the form of more patient capital and more productive investment.

In light of the working group on ‘Productive finance’ that has been convened by the Bank of England, the FCA and HM Treasury, we think this event is quite timely.