William Wright
@williamw1
Founder of think tank New Financial. Bigger & better capital markets in Europe. ‘Top City wonk’ - CityAM. Expert on the decline of ties - Daily Mail
My day was immeasurably improved by seeing a baby red squirrel poking its little nose out of a squirrel box
And before you @ me on the poor performance of UK equities, UK DC pension providers seem perfectly capable of undermining perfromance on their own (a 100% equities fund with 20% in UK and 80% ROW would have beaten all but two of the main pension providers in the five years to 2024...)
This is a controversial topic, so it's fortunate that we published a report looking at some of the different options to incentivise / encourage / mandate DC pensions to invest more in UK equities last year 9075c432-8d38-4fcf-8025-d4433c9ea618.usrfiles.com/ugd/9075c4_7...
It's always nice to see our work at New Financial out in the wild: in this case, being cited in Andy Haldane's speech at the BCC conference. Here's the key chart on how much less UK pensions invest in domestic equities compared with other pension systems www.theguardian.com/business/202...
I know a lot of the debate over the past decade has confirmed pretty much everyone's priors but I think our analysis at New Financial from July 2016 of the impact of Brexit on the City has held up pretty well ...
I miss my Dad, and so do my boys. He would have been very proud of them, and very grumpy about the cricket
I am really looking forward to hosting @helenebismarck.bsky.social later today for a roundtable at New Financial to discuss her excellent new book ‘Fantastic Kingdom’
It’s been 28 years since the rest of France and the world celebrated the incredible ‘black-blanc-beur’ team that won the World Cup in 1998, but Dan Hannan and his nice friends:
Don’t tell @katie0martin.ft.com but the pervert glasses seem to have taken over the FT’s website
Bloody immigrants, coming over here in their hordes and dying for Kjng and country … (photos from the India Memorial at the Menin Gate in Ypres)
The welcoming committee late last night when I arrived at the place I’m staying in Wales
If anyone is feeling nostalgic can I recommend getting on a Great Western Railway cross country diesel train to Reading. Just listen to it. Instantly transported back to the 1980s.
Total spending on road maintenance by local govt was £4.2bn in 2009/10 which is about £6.5bn in today's money. From that you can work out how much has been spent on road maintenance every year since 2010 (the blue columns) and how much has *not* been spent compared with 2010 (the grey columns) 5/
This charts shows that spending on road maintenance has been cut by 30% in real terms (the yellow line) and has been running at 30% below 2010 levels each year in the past decade (spare a thought for spending on libraries and youth services...) 4/
This chart how deep the cuts were to central funding of local government: more than 20% by 2019 in real terms and more than 25% on a per capita basis (at a time when the bill for statutory spending on adult social care had gone up) 3/
(Perhaps the lack of vision / ambition / consistency is not helped by the fact that as of yesterday we now have our fourth Economic Secretary to the Treasury / City minister since the 2024 election, and have had 20 ESTs in the past 20 years...)
There are some flashing red warning signs: over the past five years, domestic activity has shrunk relative to GDP in most sectors, and the UK has lost global market share in the majority of sectors of domestic and international activity ...
Spot the odd one out: here is the past 20 years of ESTs / City ministers. Some big names who cut their teeth as ESTs before moving on to greater things...and some that even I struggle to remember. Rachel Blake is the fourth EST since the general election in 2024
Not the main point of this letter calling on the PM to go but who on earth designed @alexsobel.co.uk’s letterhead? Was it that guy who has a passion for graphic design?
Good to see the LibDems gradually rebuilding the Kingdom of Wessex one shire at a time under King Ædward of Davey. Just Hamtunscīr, Wiltunscir and the Vale of Teste to conquer before the kingdom is reunited to fight back the Reforme hordes of Mercia and Essex
I am a founder member of the Avocado Hand Support Group having put a knife through my left hand way back in 2008 (on my birthday)