Letter: Nation­al­istic flag-wav­ing won’t help to cre­ate a Brit­ish tech giant

Jeremy Hunt’s com­ment that the suc­cess of the UK tech sec­tor will be cent­ral to the suc­cess of the UK eco­nomy is hard to dis­agree with (“Hunt dreams of cre­at­ing a $1tn ‘Brit­ish Microsoft’ as he shrugs off for­eign raids”, Inter­view, May 14).

However, when con­sid­er­ing his fur­ther point that “the UK can cre­ate a $1tn homegrown tech giant to rival Microsoft or Google”, it’s import­ant to remem­ber that US-born tech giants did not flour­ish because they were vying to be US flag-wavers. Sim­il­arly, today’s small UK tech busi­nesses won’t be driven by such motives either. A vis­ion nar­rowed to a UK national scale could risk lim­it­ing start-ups to aspire to noth­ing bey­ond selling out to those with deeper pock­ets.

Rather than being con­fined by bor­ders, we should be seek­ing to dis­mantle them; for­ging stronger ties with the US and other like-minded coun­tries to allow UK tech com­munit­ies to flour­ish and grow. More sup­port for UK tech busi­nesses to make over­seas invest­ments and acquis­i­tions, par­tic­u­larly in the US, is para­mount, along­side more uni­versity exchange pro­grammes, increased invest­ment in UK uni­versit­ies, thought­ful sim­pli­fic­a­tion of the rules around mer­ger con­trol and the National Secur­ity and Invest­ment Act as well as bench­mark­ing sec­tor-rel­ev­ant tax and invest­ment incent­ives against the US. Such a transat­lantic tech com­munity will cre­ate and encour­age busi­nesses with strong UK com­pon­ents that can thrive glob­ally.

Whether they end up being major­ity US-owned or major­ity UK-owned, the UK stands to bene­fit if it pos­i­tions itself at the heart of, and not apart from, the global tech eco­sys­tem.

Nick O’Don­nell
Part­ner, Bird & Bird, Lon­don EC4, UK