Note for Spud
UK tech start-ups and the next rung up, so-called “scale-ups”, secured £12.4 billion in venture capital funding in the first five months of the year, with a record £9 billion being raised in the first quarter of the year alone. This puts the UK second only to the United States in terms of start-up investment, and ahead of China.
This is where investment in new things happens. Stock markets are where the successes can be cashed out. The existence of the ability to sell those second hand shares on the stock market is what incentivises these investments in new things.
To increase homegrown sources of funding, the government’s most recent digital strategy paper said it was proposing to relax rules preventing UK pension money being invested in riskier funds such as venture capital, something that has been debated for years.
Of course Spud will be against that, won’t he?