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The boss of a number one company advisory agency has rejected the prospect to affix the UK authorities as funding minister, leaving Sir Keir Starmer with a obvious emptiness on the eve of a high-profile funding convention.
Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, head of the International Counsel advisory group he co-founded with Lord Peter Mandelson, had been the primary alternative of chancellor Rachel Reeves for the high-profile function.
The transfer sends the authorities “again to the drafting board” in quest of an funding minister, mentioned one enterprise lobbyist, who added officers had signalled they’d prioritise the “credibility” of the brand new candidate over velocity of appointment.
But ministers danger operating out of time to search out an alternate determine to take up the function forward of its “worldwide funding summit” in London on October 14. Ministers are hoping to lure high-profile enterprise figures from the world over to the occasion to advertise funding within the UK.
The Labour authorities, which gained a landslide within the normal election in July, is looking for to current itself as pro-business, regardless of repeatedly warning that main tax rises are coming in its first Finances on the finish of October.
Regardless of holding talks with figures together with Downing Road chief of workers Sue Grey, Wegg-Prosser turned down the job with the intention to deal with his personal sector profession, authorities officers confirmed. Bloomberg first reported his rejection. Wegg-Prosser, who was additionally a communications director to former prime minister Tony Blair, declined to remark.
International Counsel has places of work in London, Brussels, Singapore and Doha, and gives regulatory and political recommendation to shoppers starting from TikTok and JPMorgan to BP, Glencore and personal fairness teams.
It was valued at about £30mn earlier this 12 months following a deal to promote a 20 per cent stake to the Messina Group, the funding agency based in 2013 by former Barack Obama marketing campaign supervisor Jim Messina.
The function of funding minister might be pivotal for the brand new Labour authorities’s relations with the enterprise world, at a time when ministers hope to draw personal funding into the UK financial system.
The Labour authorities has appointed Varun Chandra, former head of Hakluyt, one other advisory group, as Starmer’s particular adviser on enterprise and funding.
Though enterprise leaders have welcomed a few of Labour’s proactive measures, comparable to its promise to tear up planning legal guidelines to speed up new infrastructure, some are cautious about insurance policies that embody an overhaul of workers’ rights.
Ministers invited chief executives of among the UK’s most high-profile firms into Whitehall on Tuesday morning for a “enterprise breakfast”, in an effort to reassure them a few main bundle of employment laws that might be put earlier than parliament subsequent month. Ministers signalled they wish to keep away from “unintended penalties” for companies from the insurance policies, mentioned an individual briefed on the assembly.
Wegg-Prosser would have been based mostly within the Workplace for Funding — a joint Downing Road and enterprise division unit — the place his function would have concerned courting potential traders.
Earlier funding ministers have included Lord Gerry Grimstone, ex-deputy chair of Barclays, and Lord Dominic Johnson, who co-founded funding agency Somerset Capital Administration.
