Reform UK is prepared to pay City of London-level salaries to attract the investment talent it would need to run its proposed sovereign wealth fund, Bloomberg reported, a sign the party is trying to get ahead of a familiar criticism of state-run investment vehicles: that they can't compete with the private sector for the people who actually know how to manage the money. The premise behind offering competitive pay is straightforward, a fund of the size Reform has in mind would need to hire portfolio managers and executives away from firms that already pay market rate, and a below-market public-sector salary structure has historically made that difficult for comparable state investment bodies.
The fund in question is the one Reform deputy leader Richard Tice unveiled in February as the centerpiece of his first policy package as the party's spokesman for business, trade, and energy: a plan to consolidate England and Wales's Local Government Pension Scheme, worth roughly £391 billion as of March 2024 and covering 6.7 million members, into a single British Sovereign Wealth Fund that Reform estimates could be worth up to £575 billion. That would dwarf the government's existing National Wealth Fund, which holds under £28 billion, and would place Reform's proposed vehicle among the eight largest sovereign wealth funds in the world.
Tice has framed the fund as part of a broader restructuring of how Britain manages its own capital, folding it into what he calls a new "Great Office of State" spanning business, trade, energy, and housing, which he says would deliver "a joined up, comprehensive department" built for "speed and action." The fund itself would hold listed shares in the UK and abroad under what Reform calls a strategic UK growth mandate, targeting technology, small and mid-sized growth companies, life sciences, and a limited set of strategic national assets, and the party has previously floated interest in taking stakes in firms like Rolls-Royce and partially renationalizing the water sector.