Rachel Reeves hosts Scott Bessent and finance execs for investment talks
Chancellor Rachel Reeves hosted US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent and top dogs from most of the world’s biggest finance firms in a warm-up event ahead of President Donald Trump’s UK arrival on Tuesday evening.
City firms including Barclays, HSBC and Revolut sent representatives to Downing Street, where they were joined by bosses from top Wall Street banks including JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs.
Finance chiefs were marking a total of over £1.25bn in investment, with all eyes on Reeves and Bessent on whether trade deal details can be finalised.
President Donald Trump is set to arrive on Tuesday evening, with meetings on Thursday at the Prime Minister’s estate in Chequers to flesh out some of the details around a mooted tech partnership and a potential expansion of the trade deal.
Some awkward exchanges were also likely to have occurred amid rumours of banks being targeted in a fresh tax raid and growing criticism of Reeves’ fiscal policies from the financial sector.
BlackRock, which was present at the roundtable discussion, this week celebrated the opening of their new Edinburgh office while Citi Group said it was investing £1.1bn across its UK operations.
Officials from the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) and S&P were also present, with the US-based intelligence group announcing they had invested £4m into their Manchester offices .
Other firms to be present at the meeting included Schroders, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and CD&R.
Meanwhile business groups are keen to understand whether steel tariffs will be wiped out and what “preferential treatment” for the UK regarding tariffs on pharmaceutical companies means in practice, although Morning Wire understands no development is expected this week on the matter.
Rachel Reeves’ showdown with finances bosses
Rachel Reeves hailed investment commitments as proof of the UK economy’s “immense potential”.
The Chancellor is to have beenn grilled on rumours around potential bank taxes, which has partly been suggested to claw back losses through the Bank of England’s quantitative tightening (QT) process.
A number of City chiefs have slammed the prospect of bank taxes being hiked, with Barclays’ chief executive CS Venkatakrishnan claiming banks in the UK were taxed higher than in other jurisdictions.
Crypto firms also made an appearance at the meeting, with Coinbase – the firm that produced a damning advertisement satirising the UK’s decline – being represented at the meeting.
The Chancellor has made the growth of fintech and crypto firms central to its industrial strategy. Her Mansion House speech earlier this year set out ambitions to boost retail investment and lending as she moved ahead with cutting some regulations.