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There are many areas where the British economy struggles to compete with its counterparts, but in one sector it is up there with the best in the world: finance.
And when it comes to finance, there is perhaps one event above all others which are developed to celebrating the City of London: the Mansion House banquet in the middle of summer.
This is when the great and good of the square mile mingle with some of the policymakers, central bankers and regulators discussing the issues of the day.
There have been plenty of controversies in the past.
A few years ago the event was gatecrashed by a Greenpeace protestor who was manhandled quite roughly out of the event by the then City minister Mark Field.
The banquet was occasionally a place of tension during the financial crisis, when questions raged about the conduct of the banking system and, for that matter, their overseers in the UK authorities.
And given there are questions growing about the UK’s economic policies – the Bank of England‘s in the face of a cost of living crisis and the government’s plans in the face of major green investments by the US – this is relatively safe territory for the chancellor.
He and the prime minister like the City of London – they believe it is part of the answer to how the UK economy can thrive in the coming years. They see it as an answer to their problems rather than a problem in and of itself.
So it’s perhaps fitting that Jeremy Hunt has chosen this as the forum to announce some quite technical but also quite important changes to the way the pensions system works.
How will UK pensions change?
In brief, the plan is to encourage UK pension funds to put a bit more of their money into private companies.
At the moment only about a percentage point or so of pension funds’ money (and we’re talking here about the defined contribution schemes most people are now members of) goes into private, unlisted funds.
The vast, vast majority is instead invested in government bonds and…
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