Stock Markets

Lord Kamall Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I disagree with the noble Lord. I think that our leaving the EU presents opportunities for the City, which is exactly what the Government plan to capitalise on through the Financial Services and Markets Bill and other things that I have already mentioned. We do not just trade with Europe, and we continue to be one of the pre-eminent global financial centres in the world.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend is absolutely right to say that there are a number of ways of measuring the rankings of different financial centres. In the ranking to which the Question refers, one reason why Paris has overtaken London is because of the value of LVMH—one company, which has doubled its share price. It shows the challenge of making sure that we are attracting growth companies. What are the City and Government doing to make sure that we continue to attract growth companies to list in London?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right that one factor in play here is that different sectors are represented more strongly in the different stock markets, which have been affected differently by the global uncertainty and inflationary pressures that we have faced. On his point about what we are doing to attract investment into the UK, I say that two elements of the growth plan that were retained were around the annual investment and small enterprise investment—I will get the acronym wrong, but I refer to the other investment allowances. We consider that to be incredibly important. I have mentioned before a number of the changes to listing rules including, for example, dual class share structures, which have been taken forward by the FCA.