Panmure Liberum is a new force in UK Investment Banking and Corporate Broking

I mean really fast. Faster than the internet, according to a survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis from August this year. Just 2.5 years after the chatGPT debut in November 2022, some 40% of Americans reported using generative AI at least some of the time, for work or at home. At the same point in the lifecycle of the internet, the adoption rate among Americans was just half that at about 20%.

What is the most efficient way to grow the UK economy, and improve living standards? It is a question that often triggers a sharp intake of breath from economists, and the answer invariably involves capital. Too little capital has been invested by the UK private and public sectors over the last four decades. An average of 17% of national income has been invested across this period. This compares to 20% among other G7 economies. A three percentage point difference may not sound like much but - compounded over forty years in a 2.5 trillion-pound economy - that is a lot houses, roads, data centres, power networks, and research.

I keep on banging the drum for investor engagement with corporations on ESG matters. I have written before that if investors team up in a syndicate, they have a better chance of changing corporate practices and that investor engagement on climate change-related topics tends to reduce the carbon intensity of targeted companies. But now, I have come across a study that shows how successful engagement directly reduces downside risk in the share price.