{"id":605404,"date":"2026-05-26T20:32:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T20:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/605404\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T20:32:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T20:32:09","slug":"pension-funds-still-failing-uk-tech-stars-says-oxford-chief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/605404\/","title":{"rendered":"Pension funds still failing UK tech stars, says Oxford chief"},"content":{"rendered":"

The chief executive of Oxford University\u2019s spin-out fund has said that UK pension funds are still \u201cway off the pace\u201d when it comes to investing in high-growth tech companies despite years of government-led reform efforts.<\/p>\n

The comments reflect frustration with the lack of speed of programmes such as the Mansion House accord, in which domestic pension funds voluntarily committed to invest a share of their assets in private and high-growth companies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone\u2019s diagnosed the problem, but the movement towards the solution is just way off the pace in terms of the speed at which we and others are building companies,\u201d Ed Bussey<\/a>, chief executive of Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE), said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got companies with technology that should be thinking about $100 billion in terms of the scale of opportunity, and that\u2019s reflected in the international capital \u2014 and particularly US capital \u2014 that is being attracted into these sorts of companies.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bussey said that the vast majority of the \u00a3300 million in external capital raised by OSE\u2019s portfolio companies last year was driven by US investors rather than domestic backers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing wrong with US money per se \u2026 but the share of UK money, particularly UK pension money, just needs to be dialled up about ten times,\u201d he said. \u201cI think there\u2019s a lack of understanding [within pension funds] of this space, I think there\u2019s a lack of understanding of the opportunity, there\u2019s a lack of understanding of the potential returns.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe rest of the world scratches its heads when they look at this. One of my Gulf investors says \u201cyou are sitting on our equivalent of Gulf oil\u201d, but UK pension funds are largely missing in action from this opportunity,\u201d he continued.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Scale-up companies in the UK get as much as 80 per cent of their funding from overseas investors, according to UK Private Capital. Incentivising domestic pension funds to invest in high-growth UK companies has been a priority for both Conservative and Labour governments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last summer, 17 workplace pension firms signed up to the voluntary Mansion House accord<\/a>, agreeing to invest at least 10 per cent of their funds into private markets by 2030. It followed a similar agreement in 2023, known as the Mansion House compact, which had set a 5 per cent target for investment in private markets.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"LordLord Vallance of Balham, the science ministerChristopher Proctor for the times<\/p>\n

Lord Vallance of Balham, the science minister, has said that the Mansion House accord would make a difference to enabling UK companies to raise capital from domestic backers. \u201cIs it as fast as everyone wants? No. But it\u2019s starting and I really believe that\u2019s going to change quite rapidly,\u201d he said at last week\u2019s Times Life Sciences Summit.<\/p>\n

Bussey\u2019s comments came alongside OSE\u2019s latest annual report, which showed that the company net asset value increased 17 per cent year-on-year to \u00a31.26 billion, largely thanks to two big exits last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The first was the $1.08 billion acquisition of Oxford Ionics<\/a> by Ion Q in September, the company\u2019s first unicorn exit. Before the year ended, OSE also completed the sale of Dark Blue Therapeutics to Amgen in a deal worth up to $840 million. The two exits returned over \u00a3283 million to OSE. Bussey said he anticipated further realisations in the years ahead.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin the next two to four years we\u2019re going to hit a phase of regular realisations. We\u2019ve proven that we can take science out of a lab, and create a billion-pound company. What\u2019s more exciting is now we\u2019ve got line of sight to that happening on a consistent basis,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The chief executive of Oxford University\u2019s spin-out fund has said that UK pension funds are still \u201cway off…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":605405,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[84,4176,4174,4175,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-605404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605404\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/605405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}