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International business leaders have committed £29.5 billion to the UK economy to boost Rishi Sunak ahead of his global investment summit on Monday.
US tech giant Microsoft and German vaccine maker BioNTech are among a list of companies that have pledged to invest billions of pounds in the UK, with technology, renewable energy and scientific research among others set to benefit.
The prime minister unveiled the investment package on Sunday, hours before his summit at Hampton Court Palace, where he will welcome 200 business leaders and investors.
Participants include Wall Street executives such as David Solomon of Goldman Sachs, Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase and Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone.
The theme of the summit this year is “British Ideas – Past, Present and Future”. The main event will be followed by a reception at Buckingham Palace hosted by King Charles.
Mr Sunak said the £29.5 billion of new investment would help create 12,000 jobs and was “a huge vote of confidence in the future of the UK economy”.
He said: “Global leaders are right to support Britain – we are making it the best place in the world to invest and do business.”
“Attracting global investment is at the heart of my plan to grow the economy.”
The government is pushing hard to invest to boost growth, which stagnated from July to September.
The biggest cash injection announced on Sunday came from Australian pension fund giant IFM Investors, which pledged to spend £10 billion on major infrastructure and energy transition projects over the next four years.
Microsoft has also committed £2.5 billion to the UK’s AI infrastructure, which will go towards building data centers and graphics processing units.
German company BioNTech, which developed the first mRNA-based Covid vaccine, will also spend £1 billion over ten years – on a new lab in Cambridge and an AI center in London.
Iberdrola, a Spanish renewable energy company, also confirmed a further £7 billion of investment in the UK’s renewable energy sector as part of a wider £12 billion investment program from 2024 to 2028.
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Investment in the UK’s renewable energy sector has boomed in recent years.
Between 2021 and 2022, investment rose from £19 billion to £55 billion – a 189 percent increase.
Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch said: “People want to invest in a country with vision, ideas and growth and our summit showcases all of these qualities and proves why Britain is the most exciting and innovative place to invest in the world.”
“The numbers speak for themselves: at $2.7 trillion, we have the third-highest foreign investment in the world.”
The flurry of investment follows the government’s announcement earlier this month of a new Advanced Manufacturing Plan that will provide £4.5 billion in funding from 2025 to 2030 across eight sectors, including life sciences and clean energy.
It also comes after Japanese car giant Nissan last week announced a £2bn plan to build three electric car models at its Sunderland factory.
In his autumn statement, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt unveiled a series of tax cuts for businesses, including the permanent introduction of “full cost accounting”.
But critics have warned that this does not come close to offsetting the blow of the corporation tax rise in April, when Mr Hunt raised the overall tax rate for companies with profits of more than £250,000 a year from 19 per cent to 25 per cent.
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