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    Taxpayers lose £400m as result of investment fund set up by Rishi Sunak
    United Kingdom

    Taxpayers lose £400m as result of investment fund set up by Rishi Sunak

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    15 Comments

    1. qwerty_1965 on

      “The fund also invested nearly £2m in companies linked to Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty.

      The Department for Business and Trade’s latest annual report shows that 334 companies backed by the Future Fund have since gone under, costing the taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds”

      And

      “Shortly after the launch, the BBB’s then chief executive, Keith Morgan, warned ministers that the scheme would mostly attract “second-tier” companies that could not attract investment from elsewhere and that achieving value for money for the taxpayer was “highly uncertain”.

      The business department’s annual report shows that 3.9% of its investments – about 47 firms – were flagged for suspected fraud, amounting to £79.5m of the Future Fund’s total investment”

    4. GuyLookingForPorn on

      Not to dirty myself by defending Rishi Sunak, but it feels misleading to portray this as investments. This was just a COVID policy designed to stop our start up ecosystem collapsing over night.

      It wasn’t designed to make money, it was designed to save our innovation economy, which it did.

    5. BaBeBaBeBooby on

      With Sunak’s history of making personal profit from policy, I’d be amazed if the Sunak family didn’t make millions from this investment fund

    6. deyterkourjerbs on

      I don’t have a problem with this. Investing in this sort of thing is a gamble but it’s an optimistic idea.

    7. goonercaIIum on

      To be honest investing in startups around the pandemic to the current environment, that’s not the worst loss lol

    8. Informal_Drawing on

      It doesn’t say how many companies are still working, just that 334 have folded. Perhaps I missed the number?

      It doesn’t seem like the full story.

    10. WGSMA on

      It kills me to see shit like this

      £400m invested into a Global All Cap tracker equivalent would return approx £28m a year in real growth

    11. FoxtrotBravoZulu on

      I’m a professional VC and I cannot understand why they thought this would be a good idea. This game is far too high risk to be putting taxpayer money on the line.

    12. Small-Percentage-181 on

      The Tories spent 14 years taking as much money from taxpayers as possible and putting it into their supporters banks.

      Covid 19 was a fucking bonanza for these ghouls hence the parties at downing Street.

    13. Sea-Caterpillar-255 on

      Single handedly doing more to reduce wealth inequality than the whole labour government combined…

    14. merryman1 on

      I do quite enjoy the general right wing small-c conservative narrative of empowering financiers and business leaders to take over our politics because, y’know, they’re just dead competent and smart or how else would they be in their position?

      And then every single *fucking time* the people they’re pointing to are incompetent twats like this.

      I’ve still seen next to no mention of anyone pointing out Rishi deciding to link our state debts back to current (rather than fixed) interest rates ***exactly*** when global interest rates started shooting back up again has arguably already cost us more than the “Brown sold the gold!!!” meme the right are still bringing up nearly 20 years later.

      Funny how they just get away with everything like this isn’t it…

    15. Astriania on

      This is absolutely dogshit tier journalism.

      This scheme is for startups, which you’d expect to have a high failure rate. “334 companies backed by the Future Fund have since gone under … The Future Fund spent £1.14bn backing 1,190 companies” – so that’s a failure rate of about 1/3 after 5 years. That seems pretty good honestly.

      They are only accounting for the losses, not the possibility that some of the 2/3 remaining will be worth far more at exit. That’s how all VC-backed startup investment works – you accept the total loss of half your investment but the other half more than doubles.

      And finally, it was a COVID-era business support programme, making money isn’t really the point. Investing £1bn in our entrepreneurial startup economy at a time of depressed demand was a good idea in its own right, even if the money actually was poured down a pit (which like I say is not true).