🎢 Bumpy week for British business
Microsoft | AI Polling | Will Shu | Stock Markets | Andy Coulson
It has been a bit of a bumpy couple of weeks for UK business, what with the furore around the CBI continuing to spill out, seemingly still generating headlines on a daily basis.
There continues to be a lot of sound out in the business classes about what should happen next. Rain Newton Smith must feel like the England football manager after an early exit at a tournament, no-one is short of an opinion on what should happen next. It was interesting to read in the Sunday Times that she has lost her father around the time she accepted the job.
If you are new here, my name is Jimmy McLoughlin, a former Downing Street adviser turned podcaster. I write this notebook on the most interesting things I have seen on the future of work, jobs, technology and politics.
🚧 Business needs it own Mick Lynch
🤖 AI impact on jobs - polling
🎮 Microsoft | Activision Blizzard | CMA | future of video games
🚴♂️🥑 CMA and Will Shu of Deliveroo
💰 Stock Market Challenges
🗞️ Andy Coulson
I think some of the takes on where the CBI / business should go next are getting sharper with more time and thought.
Martha Lane Fox in the Sunday Times on why the British Chambers can replace the CBI
Dominic O’Connell, former BBC Radio 4 business presenter writing in The Times writing how businesses needs its own Mick Lynch
And a plug for my own piece from a few weeks ago, the day before Danker was sacked.
It is undoubtedly a sea change moment for business representation and I’ll be writing a big piece next week on it, so make sure you ….
🎮 Microsoft | Activision Blizzard | future of video games
There has also been the CMA decision around Microsoft and Activision Blizzard which is another bumpy moment for British business.
With Brad Smith, VP at Microsoft saying:
probably the darkest day in Microsoft’s four decades in Britain
the EU is a more attractive place than the UK to start a business if you want to sell it one day
UK govt needs to look hard at the role of the CMA
That is punchy stuff to put it mildly.
It was a frustration of my time in No.10 that business leaders would not be more forthcoming on the airwaves.
Too often I felt business leaders would use the CBI or trade bodies as a shield - I understood why they did this for commercial reasons, but it still made life hard, the ABPI, BRC and CBI, would was like an alphabet soup compared to a household name like Tesco.
(As an aside, It has been good to see two of the best ever guests on Jimmy’s Jobs, Matt Clifford and Ben Francis out on the airwaves this week on Laura Kunnsberg and Nick Ferrari respectively.)
The video games industry is an enormous industry for the UK, but most politicians largely still view it through the prism of their kids playing the game, but it is now worth more than the film industry and it is going one way.
Rishi Sunak is the first ever real gaming PM, you can see the passion he talks about with Mario Kart on this Jimmy’s Jobs clip:
We are very excited that Miles Jacobsen, the CEO of Football Manager coming out as part of our 100 episode celebrations in May. They employ 300 people on the Olympic Park at Here East and another 1,000 scouts and researchers across the world.
🤖 AI impact on jobs - polling
This week we have some incredible polling coming out on AI / ChatGPT and the future of jobs with the team at Focal Data.
Make sure you subscribe to be the first to know when it lands. In addition, we will be giving a way a bottle of fabulous English Sparkling Wine to the person who guesses correctly to the following (or closest!)
What percentage of the UK population have NOT tried ChatGPT yet?
And as a tiebreaker what percentage of respondents believe Govt should intervene in protecting jobs from AI?
Just comment beneath or hit reply with your answers.
T&Cs: UK addresses only, answers must be submitted by Tuesday 11:59pm, individuals must be subscribed to this Substack.
Feel free to forward to friends / colleagues / vague acquaintances to play:
🚴♂️🥑 CMA and Will Shu of Deliveroo
with perfect timing had Will Shu on to talk about all manner of things, including his views on the CMA, saying he felt like they had treated him like a criminal. The language gets even more colourful than that later on, full link below.
More broadly, Shu talks about how almost 50 companies have been spun out of Deliveroo and how he really wants to encourage more risk taking in the UK.
Shu has been pillared a lot for the float, and he is candid in the interview with Ruddick about finding that hard at points.
There is a lot of commentary on how LSEG is struggling at the moment. But it is not just a London challenge, the attraction of public markets continues to be on a downward trend. Since 1996, half the number of companies are IPO’ing in the US.
I was struck by this paper from Partners Group, ‘the new traditional asset class’, which looks at how under the next cycle, private markets could be up to $30 trillion more than US GDP.
That is a three fold increase from 2020 - one of my first bosses said you should never use exclamation marks in business text … but (!)
This is a fundamental shift in the way our economies are structured and it poses many challenges. For policymakers it is a serious question of how do you get more capital into the hands of ordinary people how do they feel connected with the economy, their their house price.
Without capital, they are unlikely to support capitalism.
🗞️ Andy Coulson
We interviewed Andy Coulson on the podcast this week, who has had a remarkable life story.
If anyone is interested in the business of show business and how it has altered over the years, this is very much worth a listen.
There is also plenty of insight about politics and prison too.
And if you only have a few minutes and want a good laugh, scroll to 0:52 in where you can hear how I first met Andy.
A future Chancellor, Deputy Prime Minister and Andy Coulson walk into a bar …
As I said above we have some major polling coming out this week on the future of jobs and AI. We’ll be sending it out on substack first 👇👇
✍️ This notebook is not possible without …
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