‘Muscular’ Britain brings in Mubadala
Since the UK voted to exit the EU, its largest trading partner, one particular phrase has been bandied around (unironically): Britain is open for business.
As part of the pro-Brexit camp’s strategy to convince everyone that Britain is much better off out of the bloc, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been trying to attract foreign investment, setting up a new government unit called the Office for Investment for that very purpose.
Its first deal is with Abu Dhabi.
Mubadala Investment Company, the UAE-based sovereign investment fund, has agreed to invest up to £5bn in the UK, including an £800m allocation to life sciences. It will invest alongside a £200m British government fund and will also look at sectors such as clean energy, tech and infrastructure.
Khaldoon Al Mubarak, Mubadala’s chief executive, said its investments would be “a sizeable number, appropriate for these sectors in order for us to make the right scale and returns”.
DD has told you about how large sovereign investment funds in the Emirates have been busy diversifying their portfolios away from oil, so it’s no surprise that Mubadala has set its sights on opportunities in the UK.
The $232bn Abu Dhabi fund “only deals in big numbers” according to officials. It’s a potential rival to Blackstone, which said last year it was planning to use money from a $14bn Saudi-backed infrastructure fund to invest in the UK, after a US rebuilding drive that was originally intended to receive much of the cash got off to a slow start.
Gerry Grimstone, the UK’s investment minister, said the “sovereign investment partnership” was part of a “much more muscular and entrepreneurial approach to attracting investment.”
He told the FT’s Andrew England and George Parker he hoped it would be a “catalyst” to attract the world’s best venture capital funds to the UK’s life sciences industry.
According to Grimstone, the UK’s problem in the past has been a lack of venture capital money floating around. That’s news to us.
It’s also left us wondering why the UK can find £37bn for a coronavirus test-and-trace programme that has “failed to deliver [its] central promise” of averting another lockdown, according to a group of lawmakers — but looks abroad for investment in some of its most promising companies.