A clue:
Mark Kleinman, the city editor at Sky News, has reported chancellor Rachel Reeves has called in executives from companies including Abrdn, BlackRock, Citi, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Schroders for a meeting on Wednesday morning.
Kleinman said sources had informed him “the meeting was intended to feed ideas into the forthcoming financial services growth and competitiveness strategy” and that the chancellor would be seeking ideas to help drive UK economic growth by “assessing Britain’s international competitiveness.” [1]
Another clue (updated 20-2-25):
Major funds it is reported are trying to pressurise the Chancellor to reduce the amount people can save in cash ISAs in an attempt to divert people’s money into stocks and shares ISAs. ISAs are government permitted interest free savings account. The plan seems to be to basically force savers to buy stocks and shares! Think that one through. For example; I (this blog author) choose to save with a building society precisely because I don’t want to invest in stocks and shares, (I don’t believe in the economic model of people controlling a business who do not work in it). The canny fund mangers are on to people like me. And they want to take away this option. (Or at least make me pay for it). This Labour MP agrees wholeheartedly:
More than 18 million people have a cash Isa, and there is almost £300bn sitting in them, but earlier this month the new economic secretary to the Treasury, Emma Reynolds, spoke about the need to drive an investment culture “that realises cash is not a good investment”, adding: “Why do we have hundreds of billions of pounds in cash Isas?”
As they say. You couldn’t make it up.
Notes