Rachel Reeves, who’s likely to take over stewardship of the UK economy next year, has a problem and a solution which could beget another problem. The initial problem is underinvestment in British start-ups and equities as pension funds go elsewhere – in particular the US – in search of returns. Her solution, per the FT, will be to strongarm them into backing a £50 billion UK growth fund to revive the largely lapsed symbiotic relationship between British pensions and British companies. The difficulty is that pension funds have long-term obligations and actuaries who may study the long-term prospects of these engines of UK growth and decide they don’t measure up. She’s tripped up on smaller things, including an unbidden boarding pass tweet that revealed she flew business class to New York this week for £4,000. Fair enough. She’s busy. But then she blurred and deleted the tweet and lost control of the story.
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