UK promises regulation overhaul in bid to court wary investors
LONDON, Oct 14 (Reuters) -Britain on Monday asked its antitrust regulator to make growth and investment a priority as the government sought to woo some of the world's biggest businesses at a conference in London, in search of deals to help boost the sluggish economy.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer won power in July pledging to reinvigorate run-down public services and infrastructure by ending an era of instability under the previous government.
The government plans to announce tens of billions of pounds worth of deals in sectors including AI and life sciences during the investment conference, whose attendees include senior executives from Google, Blackrock and Eli Lilly.
Starmer will tell them that Britain's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) would be asked to prioritise growth, investment and innovation, and that the focus of other major regulators would also be reviewed.
“We will rip out the bureaucracy that blocks investment and we will make sure that every regulator in this country takes growth as seriously as this room does,” he will say, according to advance speech extracts.
The CMA is independent but receives some strategic guidance from the government and is accountable to parliament.
It was criticised last year for initially blocking Microsoft's MSFT.O $69 billion acquisition of video games maker Activision Blizzard while other international regulators gave it a green light. The CMA later ripped up its rulebook to approve the deal.
Regulation, however, is not investors' only concern.
Markets are retreating from bullish bets on Britain as hopes of reviving growth and investment are overshadowed by concern about the debt-laden economy and possible tax hikes in an Oct. 30 budget.
After announcing it had inherited a 22 billion pound black hole in the public finances, and being bound by fiscal rules that limit its capacity to borrow, Labour's first budget - and who it will target to raise money - will be crucial to the mood.
David Stevenson, fund manager at Amati Global Investors, said there was "no silver bullet" to improving investor sentiment towards the UK, with tax incentives and improvements to tax reliefs "difficult now given the fiscal position".
But Starmer will call his landslide election win a chance to end "chop and change, policy churn and sticking plasters that make it so hard for investors to assess the value of any proposition".
"Private sector investment is the way we rebuild our country and pay our way in the world," he is due to say.
Reporting by William James and Alistair Smout; Additional reporting by Sinead Cruise, Naomi Rovnick and David Milliken; Editing by David Holmes
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