Interview with: The Financial Times

Read the article on the FT in full here.

British companies need to take more risks investing abroad, according to the Lord Mayor of the City of London, who said he was “haranguing” bosses to seize opportunities in booming overseas economies.

Alastair King told the Financial Times on a visit to Mumbai that overly cautious UK financial and legal firms needed to “get on with it” and do “large amounts of business with dynamic, growing markets, such as India”.

King, who previously ran an infrastructure fund in India for almost a decade, said strong domestic competition and local currency controls meant “it was not [always] easy” to invest in the country. But his experience showed “I know what I’m talking about” and “it can be done”, he added.

The UK’s direct investment to India has dwindled from a high of more than $10.5bn in 2016 to $2.2bn last year. Many foreign and local companies privately complain about perennial difficulties doing business in India, including suffocating red tape, bureaucratic inertia and graft, and opaque and onerous tax regulation.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made removing investor bottlenecks one of his top priorities, with his government recently pledging to slim down tax and regulatory burdens. “My perception is that it’s easier to do business now as a foreign investor than it was when I was doing it,” King said, citing a new coastal road easing Mumbai’s infamous congestion and the growing offshore GIFT City financial hub in Gujarat.

“It’s going to be a tough set of negotiations,” King said of the talks. “I’ve got every confidence in the negotiators to try and thrash out [a deal], but I don’t think there’s any desire to come up with a free trade agreement for the sake of a FTA.”