The British Investment Bank (BIB)

Abstract

For British companies successfully to compete in international markets, the Government of the day needs to do more than exhort them to greater effort. It is the Government’s duty to create the conditions in which the competitiveness of British industry can be improved. One crucial step would be the provision of access to long-run investment funds on terms comparable with those enjoyed by their competitors in the major industrialised countries of the West. Britain, almost alone amongst the industrialised states of Europe, lacks an institution which offers substantial amounts of medium- and long-term credit — very often at preferential interest rates to special category customers. Only Investors in Industry (3is) offers anything like a comparable service, operating at only one tenth of the scale of its German or French counterpart.

Based on speech at London Financial Strategy Conference, County Hall, London, 16 May 1985.