Andrew Neil concerned over hostile environment for investors in UK

The presenter of the BBC’s (pictured) Daily Politics and This Week addressed the industry during a talk on new economic developments from the coalition government, at Partnership’s Later Life Symposium in London.

Neil outlined the exodus of more than 35 hedge funds to Switzerland and Jersey, “cheered on by the media” and stressed the tax man would loose up to a billion dollars a year, due to the climate created by the coalition.

Neil said: “A thousand hedge fund managers with an average income of 1.5 to 2 million, of which the taxman got 50%, have left the country all together.”

On the business secretary’s speech at the recent Liberal Democrat party conference, Neil said: “Vince Cable, I thought gave one of the most disgraceful speeches I have ever heard – he simply bashed business. Now there’s plenty to bash, bash it where it deserves it.

“But he’s the business secretary. He’s meant to be there promoting British business. I think there is something unsavoury about our political system at the moment that does that.”

The former British editor of The Economist continued: “You will not get investment if you create a political environment which chases away multinationals, bashes tycoons, even when they don’t deserve it, cheers when hedge funds relocate or makes this a hostile place for senior executives to live.

“It is senior executives which determine where most investment decisions are to be taken.”

Neil said while it was blindingly obvious the UK needed investment from private equity firms and hedge funds, politicians were more interested in winning applause by compounding the popular culture to “beat up on big business”.

Regulation was adding to the unfriendly atmosphere for foreign investment and stressed the problem would worsen due to more regulation in the pipeline from London and, more recently, Brussels, he stressed.

Alongside the perception of big business and taxation, such regulation would contribute in discouraging investment, Neil warned.

“I think this is a big problem which the coalition is not addressing,” he said.

Neil also lamented Cable’s failure to celebrate world-class British companies such as Rolls Royce.

He said: “If you were business secretary, why wouldn’t you cheer the fact that manufacturing was up 60 per cent? It seems to me that’s a good news story. But Cable was more inclined to fertilise his base – I’m afraid base is what we often have when we deal with politicians.”