L&G hikes dividend as it profits from pensions buyout boom

LOUIS GOSS

LEGAL & General (L&G) yesterday hiked its dividend after outstripping expectations by boosting its profits by 12 per cent.

Higher profits in L&G’s pensions and life insurance segments offset lower incomes from its asset management business, LGIM, after it suffered from market volatility.

L&G upped its dividend by five per cent to 19.37p as its overall operating profits increased by 12 per cent to £2.52bn.

The London financial services giant derived most of its profits from its pensions business.

L&G chief executive Sir Nigel Wilson, who announced his retirement from the company this year, said the group had “delivered another strong result in 2022, ahead of expectations”.

Shares dropped to close down near two per cent.

Sam Gyimah talks with Charlie Conchie about growing Britain’s tech industry

Speak with most tech and innovation figures in the UK currently and you will hear a similar gripe: institutional investors are not pulling their weight.

Investment into the UK’s tech sector, as with most of the world, has fallen sharply in the past year and brought into sharp relief a funding gap, one that they argue is driving the UK’s most innovative firms to greener pastures.

Pension and insurance funds, sitting on trillions of pounds of capital, are seen by the tech industry as key to getting the innovation economy moving.

Sam Gyimah, a former Conservative innovation minister who now works for venture capital firm Lakestar, is a man who makes that argument fervently.

“The uniquely British problem is the fact that structurally, if you look at any investment round, where the entrepreneur or the founder is raising more than £100m, it is very rare to find it being led by a British fund or institution,” Gyimah told City A.M.

“You have the Canadians in there, you have funds from the Middle East and you have the Americans in there, but very rarely do you have European investors, and that is a problem.”