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< Back to listClegg and Thatcher - shurely shome mishtake?
Jason Nisse
How odd that Nick Clegg is embracing the idea of giving away shares in RBS and Lloyds to over 40 million taxpayers. This idea originated with a speech by Lord Saatchi - a great adman, a good politician but hardly an exemplar of stock market investment - and was developed in a paper by a niche investment bank in the City for the Centre for Policy Studies.
Yes, that Centre for Policy Studies, the right wing thinktank founded by Keith Joseph and beloved of Mrs Thatcher. A strange bedfellow for a Liberal leader, but these are unusual times.
Paul Raeburn and I recently went to a debate about this idea at the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation. The audience of City experts was quite cynical about this plan (although acknowledging that other methods of disposal also presented challenges), saying it was overly complex and would end up being a boon for private client stockbrokers.
Two points worth considering:
1: The big (Thatcherite) privatisations of the 1980s and the demutualisations of the 1990s did not create a massive share owning culture in the UK. Most people either sold their shares immediately or sat on them and (often) forgot about them
2: This is a complex plan which will need a massive amount of explaining. Potentially this is a massive boon for advertising and PR folk.
Which may be why Lord Saatchi proposed it in the first place.
Posted by Jason Nisse.
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