48. Weekly Newsletter

UK Investment Boost

Over 200 executives are set to attend a summit in London this week including Goldman Sachs Chief executive David Solomon. At the summit, designed to showcase the UK’s appeal to investors, Rishi Sunak will announce that the Uk have been pledged £30 billion in investment pledges by international companies. The bank of England has forecasted the Uk economy will flatline until 2025 and this summit will showcase the positive Uk economy prospects whereby almost £30 billion invested into projects will provide thousands of jobs. The biggest investment pledge is from Australian infrastructure investor, IFM who have pledged to spend around £10 billion over the next 4 years on large scale Uk infrastructure and energy transition projects. IFM, who manage around £140 billion, had only recently announced that it would hold back on further investments in the UK due to “government dysfunction” and inefficient planning. Therefore, this move of confidence comes as a welcome surprise for the plan to boost UK economy confidence, spearheaded by Rishi Sunak. Some other major investment pledge includes a £2.5 billion investment by Microsoft to build data centres in the UK to bolster AI infrastructure.

Newspapers

The UK’s front page news cycle over the last seven days has covered a wide range of topics. Rishi Sunak is placed under a lot of pressure as net migration to the UK hits record high of 745,000. NHS consultants in England to vote on pay deal to end strikes and UK general election results remain unchanged. Some of the newspaper front pages from this week were:

• Financial Times- ‘Sunak courts international investors with UK’s ‘low tax
  approach’
• Financial Times- ‘UK ministers set out plans to make regulators better promote
  growth’
• The Guardian- ‘Tory MPs pressure Sunak to take ‘urgent action’ on migration’
• The Times- ‘Bosses warn 10% minimum wage hike will reignite inflation’
• Sunday Telegraph- ‘Matt Hancock knew Tier 3 restrictions would not work, Covid
  Inquiry hears’

Nissan investing heavily into the UK

The Japanese carmaker announced this week that it would be investing almost £2 billion into its Sunderland car plant to manufacture 2 new electric cars and also to build a 3rd battery factory. £1.12 billion of the investment will be to manufacture its replacements for the Juke and Qashqai which they currently build in Sunderland. Chinese battery supplier, Envision will be funding the remainder of the investment. Prime minister Rishi Sunak called the investment “a massive vote of confidence in the UK’s automotive industry”. This will also prove a huge boost for renewable goals in the UK as Nissan’s car plant is the largest in the UK and will be producing only electric cars by the end of the decade. Investment in electric vehicles comes at a very important time as the Office for budget responsibility forecasted a drop in electric car sales in the Uk in 2027. This is due to higher prices, interest rates and the pragmatic move by the government to push back ban of petrol car sales from 2030 to 2035.