Jumping the queue.

(from the FT:)

A plethora of groups left empty-handed by the Budget are queuing up in Whitehall to lobby the government over the £750m cash pot allocated towards the vaguely defined strategic investment fund.

Well since I don’t know Lord Mandelson and I’m admittedly a neophyte when it comes to navigating public sector bureaucracies, I thought that rather than go stand in line of what is certainly a very longish queue, I’d make our case from this little soapbox in case one of my readers has the Minister’s ear! (That way I’ll have no regrets, you never know until you ask and all that…) So here goes:

Over the next decade and beyond, a tremendous opportunity exists to profit from the emergence of a new paradigm in financial services and markets. Disruptive business models, products and services – enabled by exponential improvements in technology – will fundamentally challenge incumbent firms and market structures. These new approaches will drive a reconfiguration of the financial industry and the structure of many markets within the wider economy.

Nauiokas Park was created in order to take advantage of this opportunity. Marrying patient long-term growth capital with expert operational and strategic advice, we seek to create wealth for all of our stakeholders by anticipating and catalyzing change through investments in entrepreneurs and companies that will lead and shape the new industry paradigm.

Given the importance of the financial services sector to the UK economy, the relative dearth of venture capital focused on supporting and developing innovative start-ups in this sector threatens the long term health and competitiveness of the UK financial industry. The lack of a vibrant ecosystem of entrepreneurs in financial services*, hobbles the forces of competition and creative destruction and will ultimately undermine the long term competitiveness of the UK as a modern 21st century financial centre. Nauiokas Park is ideally positioned to address this and as such is an obvious partner for the UK’s Strategic Investment Fund.

Of course, one would also have to carefully consider what constraints such an investor would bring but at least to begin with, we’d come into any discussions with an open mind.

[Waiting for the phone to ring.]

* I have excluded hedge funds from this definition – not because they are not entrepreneurs, they most certainly are, but because their talents are focused on novel and unique strategies for investing and trading and not on developing new, innovative and disruptive business models or approaches to providing services.

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