Rishi Sunak to trumpet UK investment pledges at global business summit

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Rishi Sunak will on Monday highlight nearly £30bn of long-term investment pledges by international companies at a major business event intended to showcase Britain’s appeal to global investors.

More than 200 executives are set to attend the summit in London including Blackstone boss Stephen Schwarzman, Goldman Sachs chief executive David Solomon, JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon and Aviva’s Amanda Blanc.

The Global Investment Summit is part of the government’s drive to boost investment in the UK and kick-start the economy, which the Bank of England has forecast will flatline until 2025.

The Hampton Court Palace event comes days after Sunak and chancellor Jeremy Hunt gave businesses a £11bn-a-year tax break in the Autumn Statement by making the “full expensing” capital allowance regime permanent.

Sunak will claim the £29.5bn figure unveiled at Monday’s conference is triple the amount of money “raised” from the last summit in 2021 and that the investments will create thousands of jobs.

“Today’s investments . . . will create thousands of new jobs and are a huge vote of confidence in the future of the UK economy,” the UK prime minister will say.

The biggest investment pledge is from IFM Investors, a major Australian infrastructure investor, which said it intended to spend £10bn over the next four years on large-scale UK infrastructure and energy transition projects.

David Neal, chief executive of IFM, which manages $140bn, said: “We’re proud to sign this memorandum of understanding with the UK government, which is a signal of the confidence IFM and Australian superfunds have in the UK as a place to invest.”

Just last month IFM, a large shareholder in Manchester airport, said it had cooled on making further major investments in the UK because of government dysfunction and inefficient planning processes.

IFM’s chief strategy officer Luba Nikulina told the Financial Times that while the group wanted to make new investments in the UK, “we need to find financially attractive opportunities, but at the moment, there aren’t many”.

Nikulina said UK infrastructure was struggling to attract necessary private investment due to uncertainty over the direction of policy, high costs and labour shortages after Brexit.

“The biggest concern is uncertainty, which is not great for long-term capital,” she said in an interview shortly after Sunak cancelled the northern leg of the HS2 rail project.

The investment package unveiled by Sunak features Iberdrola, owner of Scottish Power, with a “confirmed £7bn of investment” from 2026 to 2028, adding to previously announced funding for projects from 2023 to 2025.

Other investments Sunak highlighted included a £5bn commitment from Australian investment fund Aware Super and a £2.5bn pledge by Microsoft to build AI infrastructure in the UK including data centres.

Monday’s summit, which will feature a celebration of “British Ideas — Past, Present and Future”, will be followed by a reception at Buckingham Palace hosted by King Charles III.