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Rishi Sunak nominates 15 top business leaders as advisers to his 2024 Business Council as battle with Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer intensifies for stronger ties with business in an election year did.
The British Prime Minister will be advised by chief executives of companies ranging from energy suppliers ScottishPower and Lloyds Banking Group to luxury food retailer Greggs and pharmaceutical company Omas Therapeutics.
Downing Street said the council would meet throughout the year to give the Prime Minister “direct information from the field that will help boost the UK economy and create jobs”.
The announcement came a day before Mr Starmer hosted his own Labor Business Conference in London. The conference is expected to be attended by 400 business leaders. Tickets for the event sold out in four hours.
Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves has vowed to “unashamedly defend” the banking industry if Labor wins the election and said there were no plans to reinstate the cap on bank staff bonuses.
Mr Sunak has struggled to repair relations between his party and business after the Brexit turmoil, Boris Johnson's anti-business rhetoric and the financial turmoil that followed Liz Truss's brief stint as prime minister. There is.
Frank Petigas, a former Morgan Stanley executive and Mr. Sunak's business and investment advisor, helped repair some of the damage and helped form a new business council.
When Mr Sunak convened the first meeting of the 2023 council last July, the meeting lasted just 45 minutes. Officials working at related companies said that opportunities for serious exchange were limited.
The Prime Minister said he wanted regular updates from the new council on “how well we are doing business”.
Quarterly meetings will also be held in Downing Street to hear from small and medium-sized businesses, along with representatives from the Business Council.
The full list of companies joining the council in 2024 is: BT Group, Nationwide, Unilever, Rolls-Royce, Scottish Power, Almac Group, Barratt Developments, ITV, Lloyds Banking Group, OMass Therapeutics, Raspberry Pi; Principality Building Society, Informed Solutions, Castore and Greggs.
The Business Council is more diverse than last year's committee, which was made up almost exclusively of listed companies in London's blue-chip FTSE 100 index.
The new council also includes computer maker Raspberry Pi, which some of City's advisers are looking to float on the UK stock market in hopes of reviving London's moribund IPO market.
They include Kasstore, a clothing brand backed by tennis player Andy Murray, and Almac Group, a Northern Ireland-based company that sells services to pharmaceutical companies.
