Overview
- Greg Jackson told The Times CEO Summit on Friday that the government’s planned five-year roll‑out of Mansion House pension reforms is too slow and must be accelerated to keep UK tech competitive.
- The Mansion House proposals would ask workplace pension schemes to invest 10% of portfolios in economy‑boosting assets by 2030 with at least 5% ringfenced for the UK, a move estimated to unlock up to £50 billion overall and about £25 billion for Britain.
- Jackson said Octopus has raised about $3 billion in total funding, roughly $2.9 billion from overseas investors, and warned that many large British tech firms no longer see London as the obvious listing or financing venue.
- He cautioned that without quicker change on pensions and clearer rules for energy and data‑centre investment the UK will face rising power costs and grid connection bottlenecks that push firms to locate compute, chips and power overseas; James Wise of the government AI fund said firms are already looking abroad for those supplies.
- Jackson traced the problem to regulatory shifts from the early 2000s and decades of pension funds cutting exposure to UK equities, a trend business leaders say reform must reverse to restore long‑term domestic capital for housing, logistics and AI projects.