Theresanomics
The Bottom Line
BBC
4.6 • 606 Ratings
🗓️ 29 September 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Theresa May has promised a bigger role for the state in business. The previously unfashionable concept of a comprehensive industrial strategy is back on the agenda. There is a new wariness about foreign investment in strategic industries such as electricity generation. Mrs May also wants to see employee representatives on company boards.
Presenter Evan Davis discusses "Theresanomics" with a panel of entrepreneurs and corporate leaders.
Guests include:
Elizabeth Corley, vice-chair of Allianz Global Investors David Pitt-Watson, former Chair of Hermes Focus Funds and co-author of The New Capitalists
Producer: Julie Ball.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you for downloading this programme. In this edition of the bottom line, we're discussing Prime Minister Theresa May's proposals to make the economy work for all, what she's calling responsible capitalism. |
| 0:12.3 | Hello, welcome to the programme, and our goal today is to help Prime Minister Theresa May. |
| 0:18.0 | She has said, very clearly and loudly, that she wants things to change and she wants to make the economy work for all. |
| 0:25.0 | Responsible capitalism is a phrase she's used, and delivering that is an objective that now commands a fair degree of political consensus. |
| 0:32.8 | Unfortunately, at the moment, it is a phrase without much clear policy behind it. |
| 0:37.4 | I don't think we can say it's an empty phrase, but let's agree it's not yet full. |
| 0:42.6 | Back in July, just before she became Prime Minister, Theresa May mentioned proposals such as putting workers on boards and curbs in executive pay. |
| 0:51.0 | But it's all hands on deck now to flesh out the policy program and I have three guests |
| 0:55.6 | to help shape the new kind of Theresaomics. Let's meet them now and I'm going to actually |
| 1:00.9 | ask each of them as we go to give us one implementable practical proposal to not just |
| 1:08.4 | towards responsible capitalism. My first guest, David Pitt Watson, former head of Hermes Fund Managers. |
| 1:15.0 | He's advised Tony Blair and Gordon Brown on industrial and corporate governance |
| 1:18.5 | and has recently published a book on the financial system, what they do with your money, |
| 1:23.9 | how the financial system fails us and how to fix it. |
| 1:26.9 | David, you've been working on this |
| 1:27.9 | area and thinking about this for quite a few years, actually, haven't you? Yes. When I worked at |
| 1:33.3 | Hermes, we were trying to think as a pension fund, which, you know, represented the savings |
| 1:39.8 | of hundreds of thousands, millions of people, how we would like the companies that we own |
| 1:43.3 | shares in to be run. And so that was really the main thing that I did. So we created a business really out of that, intervening in companies, investing in poor companies, trying to get good companies to be better. Okay. Your one proposal, David, if you had one... Of course, responsible capital isn't one proposal. But if I had one, you know, I would actually go back to something we've done already. |
| 2:04.8 | You know, 10 years ago, we passed the Companies Act with great debate about what it is that |
| 2:09.9 | directors' duties ought to be and how you reconciled making a profit with being socially |
| 2:14.8 | responsible. |
... |
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