A first observation is that the urge to re-label organisations in the attempt to appear progressive proceeded apace. 
 
Following a series of accounting scandals, an Audit, Reporting and Governance Authority has replaced the old Financial Reporting Council. In the corporate world, Wandisco has rebranded itself Cirata, Campbell’s Soup Company has dropped the ‘Soup’, and along with a move from its Smithfield premises, The Museum of London, in a startlingly revolutionary initiative, has now become The London Museum…
 
Meanwhile, in the countryside, AONBs (Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty) have been replaced by the rather duller-sounding National Landscapes. 
 
In financial services, Sainsbury’s Bank is winding down, Virgin Money is giving up, and HSBC has launched Zing, a currency payment app not to be confused with ZiG, Zimbabwe’s new bullion-backed currency. James Hay has merged into Nucleus while Lloyds Bank, owner of Scottish Widows, has advised staff against calling customers ‘widows’. Dutch lender April is entering the UK mortgage market, and in investment banking, poor Mr Gordon has been axed from the newly merged Panmure Liberum. The government-backed Pisces – or the Private Intermittent Securities & Capital System – will launch in 2025 as an exchange for unquoted companies.
 
Meanwhile, the new Government unleashed a whole raft of new quangos, projects and re-organisations on the largely unwitting taxpaying public. “Levelling Up” was quietly dropped from the Department of Housing and Communities, along with the Investment Opportunities Fund, the A303 Stonehenge Tunnel, and yet another length of the ill-fated HS2 railway line. Government debt was reclassified as ‘public sector net financial liabilities’ (complete with ‘guard-rails’) and the UK Infrastructure Bank became the National Wealth Fund. 
 
Other new initiatives included a Life Sciences Innovation Manufacturing Fund and yes, you guessed it, another regulatory organisation to accompany it: The Regulatory Innovation Office. Of course, after Grenfell, the building industry needs yet more regulating too so in comes the Building Safety Regulator, along with a £3bn Building Safety Levy on housebuilders to help pay for it.
 
Skills England now amazingly guarantees work or study for all 18 – 21-year-olds; the Government also promised a New Deal for Working People, although quite who qualifies these days as a working person has caused difficulties. Never mind, with the creation of such as the Border Security Command, a Building Back Britain Commission, a Covid Corruption Commissioner, a Child Poverty Taskforce, a Floods Resilience Taskforce, an Infected Blood Compensation Authority and an Office for Value for Money, there should no shortage of jobs around.
 
The seamless continuation of a total confusion policy directed at the automotive sector was heralded by Renault abandoning plans to list its EV business, Ampere, Sir Jim Ratcliffe delaying the launch of Ineos’s electric 4 x 4 (the Fusilier) and Luton closing down its electric van factory in its home town. Meanwhile, Jaguar Landrover is busy, er, re-imagining its ‘Re-imagine’ strategy at the Halewood plant while Volvo is reintroducing its V60 and V90 estates, axed in 2023. 
 
Continuing my observations about changing language, several new words and phrases entered common currency last year, including Mpox (the renamed Monkey Pox after complaints received at the WHO), semaglutide (a chemical compound now formulated by such as Novo Nordisk into a weight-loss drug administered by subcutaneus injection), ‘brain waste’ (referring to overqualified graduates working in coffee bars) and the ‘cold shoulder’ – an official Takeover Panel stricture, like the one decisively meted out on several directors of MWB which went into administration in 2012.  
 
Well, Sir Keir Starmer was elected on a manifesto entitled: ‘Our Plan to Change Britain’. Quite where he got this idea that people actually like change, I have no idea. I leave the last word to that supremely blithe nineteenth-century Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, who, on being urged to advocate some new policy, expostulated: 
 
“Change! What on earth do you want change for? Aren’t things bad enough already?”

Please note the views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent Church House. 

Important Information

The contents of this article are for information purposes only and do not constitute advice or a personal recommendation. Investors are advised to seek professional advice before entering into any investment arrangements.

Please also note that the value of investments and the income you get from them may fall as well as rise, and there is no certainty that you will get back the amount of your original investment. You should also be aware that past performance may not be a reliable guide to future performance.