Thank you very much for inviting me to give evidence. I work for Tokamak Energy, which was established 16 years ago as a fusion company. As part of our journey, we quickly realised that we needed to develop HTS, high-temperature superconducting. During our 16 years, we have raised in the order of £280 million through investment funding. We have also benefited from R&D and grant funding, which contributes towards that. We are just about to launch our Series D round, which will be looking for funding in excess of £100 million. This is scale-up funding that we are looking for to create a pre-production manufacturing site, ideally here in the UK. A challenge we have had to date is attracting enough UK investment. We are a UK company. We have developed more than 200 patents here in the UK, having benefited from money from the UK Government, and we are very keen to stay here. We employ more than 300 people, so it is really important for us to retain that here in the UK. When you are looking to raise funds—especially at the stage that we are at—investors are looking for a way that you can have synergies with them. One synergy is through partnership. Overseas investors are very much focused on what you can bring to their domain. With our keenness to develop our platform here in the UK first, we would really like to draw on UK investment. Q32            Chair: Has the £280 million that you have raised hitherto been largely from UK investors?

Yes. Our initial fundraising was predominantly from high-net-worth individuals. We closed our Series C at the end of last year and diversified our investment base during that round. We were very lucky to have the British Business Bank come on board. We definitely believe that helped us secure additional funding. During that round, we raised something in the order of $125 million. I use US dollars because it is a fusion company and we are often compared with our US counterparts. It was really good to have the British Business Bank come on board. If I look at the funds that were raised in that round, less than a quarter came from the UK. Q33            Chair: That is very useful. Markus, what is your story?

Thank you for having us. CMR Surgical is a tech life sciences company. We are No. 2 in the area of soft tissue surgical robotics by all important metrics. We started commercialising in 2019, have raised over £1 billion and are active in 35 different markets. We deliver hundreds of high-paying, meaningful jobs at the bleeding edge of innovation. We deliver better and more cost-effective outcomes for patients and cement the UK’s leadership in innovative life sciences. To start our journey, first we needed a lot of money. This was a high-risk, high-reward opportunity. For our proof of concept, it took two years and £3.5 million. In order to commercialise, we needed tens of millions more; in order to break even, we needed hundreds of millions more, and we needed our initial investors to be able to follow their money. When we started in 2012, that was a very difficult task in the UK. Among the investors that we have had along our journey are Cambridge Innovation Capital and Railpen, and they have stuck with us throughout our journey, through several financing rounds. Otherwise, we have had largely worldwide investors. Q34            Chair: For the next round, just give us a sense of where you think that investment might come from.

We would hope that it would have material British participation. But we are a late-stage innovator, and at the late stage, that is probably the area where there is the least British participation. We would very much like to see that happen and are very much watching what is happening with the British Business Bank and the Mansion House initiatives. Q35            Chair: We will get into why you think there is that frustration. Jenny?

Thank you for having me. I am the chief operating officer of Checkout.com. Checkout is a UK-headquartered payment service provider; we sit behind e-commerce payments and have raised over $1 billion of capital. We have a bit of a different story in that we were founded in 2012 but did not fundraise until 2019. We spent the first seven years of the company growing revenues and profit on our own. In 2019, we raised $230 million and were the largest Series A in Europe at the time. We have since raised to Series D. Our last fundraise was in 2022, and that was a billion-dollar round at the time. It has been primarily on a global landscape that we have thought about seeking investors, and that largely has to do with the fact that we were a late-stage company at the time we did our first fundraise and based on the size of the fundraise that we have looked at in each round. Our first round was led by Insight Partners, which is a New York-based venture capital firm, and DST Global, which is a global investor with offices in Silicon Valley, New York, London and Hong Kong. Most fundraise rounds since then have been led by large US venture capital firms and some Asian sovereign wealth funds. We have one British VC that was among our Series A called Blossom Capital. There is certainly great interest in more British venture capital funding, but what we found as a part of our fundraise was that we are primarily focused on the size of fundraise that we are able to execute on, and we pay a lot of attention to the specialities that each venture capital firm can bring to us. For example, Insight has a team of 130 people who focus on operational and go-to-market expertise. When we decided to partner with it—it has participated in more than one round—it largely had to do with that market expertise that it was able to bring to us. Similarly, we look to our investors to help open up customer opportunities and other vendor agreements with us, so their relationships are incredibly valuable to us. It is not simply about the geography or even the fundraise size; it is also largely based on the expertise that those partners can then bring to help us scale our business. Q36            Chair: And market access, by the sound of it.

Exactly right, yes. Q37            Chair: What is the next stage for you?

We are not actively fundraising right now; we are really focused on profitability. If we were to choose to fundraise, it would be with similar principles in terms of what we looked for, which is the size of capital we are trying to raise and what expertise those partners can bring to us. Q38            Chair: Did you have an instinct about whether the scale-up finance that you needed was available in the UK, or were you actually just more interested strategically in looking abroad for the kind of money that you needed?

We are headquartered here in the UK and the vast majority of our footprint is here, so we have engaged with the UK VCs, for example, Blossom, as I mentioned, and we have a large UK university endowment that actually got involved in our Series D. We have looked within the UK, but because it is often a few small venture capitalists that invest quite a large amount, we have not yet found that the size of investment has matched the profile of venture capital funds that we find here in the UK. Chair: In different ways, you have all said that there is not necessarily a huge availability of scale-up finance. What we are trying to understand is how a country with at least £2 trillion of pension savings finds itself in this predicament.

It seems to me as though the principles that are outlined in the Industrial Strategy and other things are good ones. The idea of the British Business Bank crowding in capital through the Mansion House initiatives seems to be good. The quantum and the effectiveness of whether it all comes together are important questions, in particular if you are a late-stage company like we are; we have done past Series D. If you are perhaps looking to the LSE as a funding mechanism, you look at that and you think the buy side that was there before was not necessarily pointed to tech life science companies. There is a big question about whether the levels of sophistication, focus and familiarity with our sectors will actually come in on the demand side there. If that demand side does not come in, there is a question about whether the supply of issuers will come in. That is part of what late-stage companies like us are focused on. Q40            Chair: I just want to draw something out there. An anxiety about whether an exit can be secured through the London Stock Exchange is potentially one of the factors that helps or encourages folks like you to look abroad for capital, because actually that might ease an exit in a different market like the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq.

In my opinion, there are some structural issues here. There is a massive equity gap in the United Kingdom that started with some perhaps misguided regulation a couple of decades ago. In some countries there is a massive retail component to a lot of, say, IPOs, and there are a lot of other different areas that can come in. For instance, in France you have Bpi, which is much larger than even the newly funded BBB and has been participating at a material level in the last decade across the different sectors and as an anchor in IPO.

Yes. If we think about what the UK has presented for us in terms of being really strong with, it is the talent market and the ability for companies to come and open up European headquarters here in the London market. When you think about attracting the right kind of companies that will then come and raise capital, those two elements are really foundational to how you think about creating a whole system that works. For us, talent density in London is enormous. We do most of our hiring based here in London; that is part of the reason we chose the UK. At my prior company, I also relocated from New York to London to open our European headquarters based here in London. We centred our NE operations out of London. That is a company that then publicly listed in 2017 on the New York Stock Exchange, but we chose London as our European hub, again, tied to talent density and market opportunity. All the factors from that standpoint are here to attract companies—particularly start-ups—to come to London to open either headquarters or regional offices and hire the right talent. Then—to your point—giving them access to equity vehicles that allow them to grow, and partnering with the venture capital community to make sure that they understand and grow that expertise of it, is beyond just capital, as I mentioned before; it is, “What expertise can I give you about entering a UK market, or even better, entering the whole of Europe?” You want companies doing that from London. The second thing to your point is on the scale of investment available. That is certainly something that we want to see the UK try to unlock better: how can we see more meaningful investment rounds come out of it? To your point on the size of pension funds, that power is there. It is just a function with the Mansion House compact of how you unlock that potential. It is worth noting that in our Series D in the US, we had two mutual funds invest, so we are definitely seeing a trend in the past decade for tech companies. When it used to be primarily venture capitals investing, we are now seeing more private equity and mutual funds get into riskier investment profiles like ours because companies are waiting longer to go public. I took my last company public, but it is not something that we discuss actively today; we are happy operating as a private company. It is encouraging that risk appetite among some financial investors that used to be more conservative and making sure that they have collective power to raise and participate in the size of fundraise that scale-ups require in order to really get to the global markets that they are trying to reach. Our stories have been very similar in that way.

I would echo some points that Markus and Jenny have said. We started as a fusion company. At the time of our spin-out from UKAEA, the UK was at the forefront of fusion; we were the leading country. We were really lucky during that time because we were able to attract talent from the talent pool. At the same time, we have been developing a brand-new industry in high-temperature superconducting. We are based in Oxfordshire, which is superconducting valley; that is predominantly where the talent pool is. We are the market world leaders on HTS technology. We are seeking go-to-market partners, so ideally we would look for UK investment in order to stay here, where the talent is and where we have grown and developed the IP. We are looking for investment all around the world and have been really lucky in our last round to secure strategic investors that we are working with on go-to-market strategies. Alongside unlocking capital, there is a space for procurement activities and Government providing access for us to have a route to market and being able to develop our technology. We have been working with the UK Government on the STEP programme, which is the UK Government’s fusion programme. To procure into that will give us access to long-term revenue streams, which will give confidence to investors to invest, but also provide a platform for us to develop our technologies. Q43            Mr Reynolds: Based on what you were just saying there, your business is working on really long R&D cycles. It is going to take a lot of time and capital to get profitable. How would you describe the risk appetite for those kinds of projects when it comes to UK investors?

If I am honest, we have exhausted the risk appetite because we are a very deep tech and have been developing our technology long term. It takes a long time to come to market but we are on the cusp of coming to market now. We have been developing our go-to-market strategy on a number of our products and we have partners that we engage and contract with. Historically, UK investors have a good appetite for that early stage when you have the new ideas. I know it has been publicised quite a lot, but I feel like we are in that valley of death—we are in the gap between a plethora of investment and investment that will only come when you have a revenue stream. We are very early in revenues: single-digit revenues last year, similar this year. If you look at the appetite for UK investors, we do not really fit the mould right now. Q44            Mr Reynolds: When you look at UK investors, how does that valley of death that you are in now compare with investors from other countries? Do you think they have that valley of death view and mindset? Chair: My sense is that the valley of death is deeper in this country than it is elsewhere.

It is deeper. I was reading some work from BCG recently comparing the UK with the US. If we look at the UK market, we have had a single-digit fall in investment appetite in that deep tech area that I work in. Whereas in this mid-later stage in the US, they have had almost a 50% increase in appetite in the last couple of years.

We are diverging.

We are diverging. It is becoming worse. Q45            Mr Reynolds: Is there anything that you can put that down to in your head? Where would you say those sticking points are?

I do think some of those institutions have a part to play.

By which you would mean the British Business Bank?

The British Business Bank and the National Wealth Fund. We attracted the British Business Bank. We are talking to National Wealth Fund about potentially participating in our round, but it has some quite hard targets around technical readiness. If I look at where we are, we nudge into where their hard gates are. In order to preserve the businesses, we need to really look at those and think about how important they are because it is not just the technical readiness; we need to look at the commercial readiness as well. We have a bit of a disconnect because what we are making is the first of a kind; it is brand new. There is no point in our making it and they will come; we need to make it with a partner that we can take to market. Although we have commercial traction, maybe our technical readiness is not quite where it needs to be. Q47            Mr Reynolds: Finally, is it your idea that the Government-backed funds—British Business Bank, National Wealth Fund—are good at the early stages for businesses like yours, but when you get ready, they are not as good as they could be? Is that your understanding or is it slightly different from that?

It is a bit different. There is a bit of a mismatch. It needs some relaxation and looking at the whole value chain of where we are, rather than just technical readiness. The engagement is suggesting that that is possible. Q48            John Cooper: Jenny, your company, Checkout.com, seems to be fairly typical in that you say you are quite comfortable as you are; you are not really looking to go to public equity. Around the world, public equity has seen something of a decline. I just wonder what your thoughts are on how attractive public equity markets in the UK really are for highly scaled firms. Do you have any view on that?

The trend you are probably referencing here is that, as I mentioned, private companies—particularly in technology—are generally waiting longer to go public. There is just a plethora; it is a seller’s market in terms of being able to fundraise. If you have good growth as a technology company, the ability to raise capital and private capital is very readily available. For companies like ours, it is incredibly attractive to continue to do those private fundraising rounds. There is a time and a place to take a company public, and there are obvious benefits of doing so. There is a lot that goes with it in terms of the operating model, and your cadences for reporting and accountability out to the market, that can really limit your ability to make innovative and big-bet choices. My opinion would be that companies are choosing to stay private because their access to private equity funding—whether it is venture capital, PE firms, mutual funds, and so on—is so readily available, and it allows companies to continue to make big bets and be incredibly innovative without having their hand forced to get to the public markets. Q49            John Cooper: Is there anything that public markets could do to make themselves more attractive? What reforms might make you think about moving over to that sooner?

As I said, there are a lot of advantages to going to public markets. For companies like ours, building a brand is incredibly important once you get to public markets. As you think about the UK markets as compared with other markets on which you might choose to list, something that is very relevant is the velocity and fluidity of those markets. We definitely see that the UK markets have historically oriented more around traditional, more mature businesses and have fewer retail trade interactions. Certainly the stamp duty on trading is something that could be revisited over time as you think about capital markets that have enough fluidity and velocity to support high-growth businesses like Checkout and others that may choose to list in the future. Q50            John Cooper: Markus, can I ask you the same question? You are at a different end of this spectrum, but do you think public equity is something that you would have gone for sooner if it were more attractive? That stamp duty point is very important, is it not?

Sure. I should also say we raised capital of about $200 million or £150 million in April and are not looking to fundraise now. Could the public markets be part of our future? Most certainly. I guess the rest of the question is, how can the public markets be more attractive? It is really a demand side thing in some ways. When you look at it, it is volatility that really allows for the sort of conditions that mean IPOs matter. There is nothing that Jenny said that I would disagree with and the same sort of principles would apply to us. It is just a matter of whether what we are trying to do in terms of our financing, metrics on performance, productivity and so on makes sense, and how that can make the journey go faster. Q51            Antonia Bance: I will ask this to you all, starting with Anita, if that is okay. Have UK-based institutional investors—such as pension funds or insurance firms—played a meaningful role in your later-stage funding rounds? Do you feel that there has been any change since the Mansion House Accord?

As I mentioned before, the British Business Bank invested in our last round. It helped to unlock some capital and helped us be successful with our round, so there is a meaningful part to play. With regard to the Mansion House Accord, it is probably too early to tell. We have had some early engagement with a couple of pension funds. Some conversations have been that we are high-risk because it is deep tech and we are early stage with small revenues and still have some technological challenges to overcome, especially in fusion. There are lots of technology challenges there. I guess our business is two parts because we have the high-temperature superconducting capability, which is very close to being ready for market, and then the fusion side, which still has scientific challenges to come. So we are quite a complicated stock to invest in, which is why it is important for me that we get the confidence from institutions—such as pension funds—who can be much more patient with long-term capital. Because we are unlisted, pension funds suggested to us that having access to be able to monetise and divest is challenging for them, especially when you have a volatile economic environment where interest rates are changing. They specifically said that, “If we can raise a bond or invest in bonds and get a good return from that, it fits with our remit to our investors.” It challenges me though when I think about all the tax breaks that we have—close to £50 billion. We do not really have that mandate for them to invest in UK equities, private or public. I would really like to see the Chancellor do something different to mandate this. I know there is a lot of work done to encourage, but it is just not happening quickly enough for us.

As I mentioned before, CIC and Railpen provided critical seed and Series A capital for us when the risk was highest. There are real benefits to having an investor like Cambridge Innovation Capital in your cap table. It has both strategic and financial benefits. It is a signal to other investors of quality, it helps in later-stage rounds, it attracts strategic partners, and it helps to build trust with regulators and clinical companies in our space. It also helps that they are backed by long-duration limited partners like sovereign wealth funds, universities and pension funds such as Railpen, which have longer development cycles and shorter exit timelines. That also helps with a deep tech company like ours.

We have not directly benefited from some UK initiatives. We have not fundraised since the Mansion House Accord or participated in some schemes like the British Business Bank. As I mentioned, we believe that the direction for scale-ups and technology companies is the right one with these. As Markus and Anita mentioned, when you think about the longevity of your investors, having someone like a pension fund come on is a long-term value for companies, particularly if you are thinking about going to the public market one day. As I mentioned, we brought on two mutual funds in our Series D and that was an intentional decision to diversify the profile of investor that we had because they will be with you for the long run. If you choose to go public one day, they are unlikely to then divest themselves in any short order after. It is the right avenues for companies—particularly scale-up companies—to take on a broad variety of investors with different timescales in terms of return. That will help build more solid businesses in the long run here in the UK.

On upsides, I will start with talent. I mentioned London being an incredibly talent-dense market for us, particularly in a lot of our technology hiring. The vast majority of our engineering team is here in London. All the initiatives that the UK and the Government are focused on in terms of university education, math, science, IT, AI and so on are incredibly helpful in enabling our business to then pick up that talent. We just started a university grad scheme. We had our first cohort start with us over the summer and are placing long-term roles from that from universities around the UK. So talent is an upside—both growing talent here in the UK, but also visa accessibility. As you might tell, I am American, so I am here on a Skilled Worker visa. Keeping those avenues available to bring in top operators from around the world is really valuable to us here in the UK. The second is that some regulatory pathways that the UK has enabled—particularly for fintech companies like us—have been enormously helpful. The UK was our first payments licence that we got in 2012 from the FCA. The FCA has been an enormous enabler to our growth and we could not have done it without that initial licence here in the UK. London is a very special market for fintechs; it always has been. You have had some really unique companies come out of London as a result of that, so anything the Government can do to continue enabling that is enormously helpful.

While we are sharing, I am also American—that is why I have my cringey accent—but also British; I have been here for the last 20 years. For us, procurement is really key. It seems the Government are focused on the right things. When you look at the Industrial Strategy, you can see they are thinking strategically about the limited amount of money that is available so that they can unlock private productivity and make it a force multiplier. There is actually a quote in the Industrial Strategy that captures well what the Government are focused on: “we need more of our start-ups to turn into scale-ups and then global superstars, a journey which too few companies are taking in the UK. And we need to nurture more deep tech firms engaging in capital-intensive, high-risk, high-reward activities which have the potential to develop critical capabilities for the UK but face barriers accessing support from the market.” To nurture and overcome barriers in our area—the NHS—there are several things in the Industrial Strategy, the 10 Year Health Plan and the Life Sciences Sector Plan. One is that the Government want to end complicated, locally variable procurement that is bad for innovators, so that companies can plan and invest in things that align with the NHS’s requirement to find technological breakthroughs. They also want to bring in a national scheme for innovation—for testing innovations—that gets the best value for the taxpayer. They want to enable medtech innovations to come through to patients quicker. That strengthens the domestic supply chain, supports good local jobs and helps to shape the markets for innovation later. That is really key: that it shapes the markets for innovation later. There is the idea to place a growth mandate on NHS Commercial and NHS Supply Chain. In my other country—the United States—DARPA’s procurement innovation system is a network that connects businesses, Government and academics and helps to develop breakthrough technologies. It is a flexible model that fosters risk taking and does not stifle disruptive technologies. In fact, the dominant market competitor in our sector was actually born of that three decades ago. Chair: Let us be brief, Markus, because we have about five minutes left, so just give us the key points.

In countries like the United States, they act deliberately as a customer for innovation. They send a clear demand signal, “If you build it here, we’ll buy it here.” They do not just back domestic industry; they create the conditions that allow risk taking to flourish. Examples of that are Microsoft, Palantir, SpaceX. Too often in the UK, the opposite is true; it is often easier for us to sell to hospitals in the Middle East and the US than here in the NHS. So we are exporting innovation and importing dependence, and UK taxpayers funding world-class research, but many times, they do not get to see it at work at home.

I will be brief because my colleagues have said pretty much what it is. I would say we have already benefited greatly from procurement. We are very fortunate to have a public-private partnership between UK and US Governments and ourselves funding a lithium programme on our prototype fusion device. That has elevated us globally to be visible to other Governments and potentially be a partner with them. So we are working and talking to other Governments to support them in their path to fusion and that has been a huge benefit to us. I mentioned before that it is not just about investments; it is about giving confidence to investors and other commercial and Government bodies that you are a party to procure from. Q53            Sonia Kumar: This is about tax incentives. I will start with Anita, but please be brief. What tax incentives is the UK offering that you feel have helped your business? Are there any reforms that need to be made or any caps that need to be lifted?

I will be really brief. We have benefited greatly from R&D tax credits. We are deep tech. We have over 200 patents that we have developed. Something that we are finding is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to access the R&D tax credits because it is becoming more complicated. In my opinion, the only way to access it is to use experts. Historically, you have been able to do it in-house but the challenges of understanding the legislation around it are becoming much more difficult. I have to be honest; we are struggling with HMRC right now. It has been almost a year since our last application and we have still not had a conclusion. I know that it is struggling with bandwidth, but if there is some way to increase capacity within HMRC and have a consistent adviser then that would be helpful to businesses going forward.

Our focus is on the path preparation for becoming public. Because there has been a dearth of IPOs, there is a shortage of the types of executives that you need to help shepherd your company along that route. It is really important that you have something like an EMI for late-stage execs. There is a $30 million growth asset limit, which also includes the money that you raise. If that can be lifted, including that caveat, that would be really helpful. Q54            Sonia Kumar: What do you think it should be lifted to?

To a reasonable level so that companies like ours could avail ourselves of it. Q55            Chair: It has been frozen for some time. These numbers have not moved for many, many years.

In my humble opinion, it has been far too long. Most people I talk to in the market—entrepreneurs and otherwise—are in stonking agreement on that. The other beneficial thing in that area is that growth shares are a real weapon for UK companies in that same area in terms of bringing together operators and leadership that can help them get to the next level. We should be able to retain that very important incentive.

We have not directly benefited from SEIS or EIS. But if our story says anything in terms of when companies fundraise—it took us seven years to get to our first fundraise—it would be great to see similar programmes for later-stage companies and to consider the caps that you put on the tax benefits associated with those programmes. Doing so would definitely facilitate that scale-up. Looking at programmes targeted for later stage would facilitate the scale-up growth that you are looking for here as with those programmes today that are very focused on early-stage, start-up growth and have been incredibly effective in terms of fuelling those companies. Q56            Sonia Kumar: I will ask a question just to Anita. For the British Business Bank, are there any reforms that you feel are needed? You said previously that there are some hard targets and that you are trying to make sure that you can meet those criteria. Do you think the criteria are just and appropriate or that they need to be shifted and reformed?

That is for the National Wealth Fund. It is about flexibility. I have seen that flexibility elsewhere. I am speaking to UK Export Finance because we are potentially going to be exporting. It has a lot of flexibility and even said to me, “Come and talk to us early because we have a number of products but we can flex them to work with you to make them fit for purpose.” If the banks and institutions can also have that approach to investing, it will make a much more favourable environment for companies such as ours. Chair: We are almost out of time but let me just come to Alison Griffiths. Perhaps when you are wrapping up, you can just give us a word about how magnetic the lure of the United States is. We have heard lots of evidence about how American investors will come in at later stages—particularly at the scale-up stage—but the price of that will be potentially lifting and shifting and exiting in the United States. So we would be interested in any closing reflections on that as well. Q57            Alison Griffiths: That will absolutely tie in with the question I want to ask. It may not have escaped your attention that there is a Budget coming up. You may well have raised your No. 1 issue in the discussions we have had already, but my question is about whether there is something extra that you have not already mentioned, or if you have already mentioned it but it is your absolute No. 1, what would your ask be to the Chancellor for this Budget to support the UK start-up and scale-up ecosystem?

I have mentioned it already: it is around the Mansion House Accord and trying to incentivise the pension funds to work at pace to provide access to funding to UK equities.

Is there a specific ask to the Chancellor within that?

She needs to mandate a percentage that they invest in the UK. If they are not able to invest, they need to provide evidence for why not. Q59            Chair: You have flagged the fact that we are tax incentivising a huge amount of investment that basically goes overseas at the moment.

It is going overseas; it is just crazy. It is UK Government money that is just evaporating from our shores.

This summer, NHS England and GIRFT published the framework on the implementation of robotic-assisted surgery in England, which has some very clear national visions: improving patient outcomes, standardising pathways, and equitable access through the NHS. It is extremely important but is unfunded. So we have a framework without fuel—a mechanism without a mandate. While in defence we have dedicated procurement that allows for backing British business, in RAS this is unfunded. We need this to be funded and move Government from being a policy sponsor to a market participant.

Mine might be the simplest, which is stability. Stability on the big issues creates an environment where we are able to grow. It is enormously valuable to us as a company in terms of our planning, execution and the talent we are able to attract. Any specific, smaller items would have been what I mentioned on the extension of eligibility criteria on the EIS and SEIS programmes. Q60            Alison Griffiths: Going to the Chair’s comment earlier about the US/UK, would you each like to just add in summary your thoughts about how we attract more of investment to the UK? You talked about the magnetic effect of the US. How can we reverse that?

Jenny?

I am happy to go first.

We will ask the Americans first.

That does not seem fair. As I mentioned, as we think about attracting investors by way of the amount of capital available, it has been the US. We are not specifically targeting bringing on US investors. As I mentioned, we brought on some Asian sovereign wealth funds as well. I would look at it as less geographic and more just the size of capital that you can contribute and then your competitiveness in market. I also would not say that raising funds from US venture capital will create an inevitability outcome on US public markets. I do not think the two are necessarily inherently connected. It is ultimately about what the best vehicles and pathways are for companies to continue to grow; one does not necessarily lead to another.

I agree with everything that Jenny says there. Again, the force multiplier of the British Business Bank and the Mansion House initiatives and being able to put that capital to work in a late-stage arena where there is a dearth and that equity gap is going to be key.

I do not think I can add anything to what Jenny and Markus have already said. Chair: That brings us to the end of our time. Thank you so much to our witnesses for that very compelling set of evidence, which has really helped us get this inquiry off to a flying start. That concludes this panel.