Britain must back its own, says says ALEX BRUMMER

Stock markets are organic and companies come and go all the time. Firms heading to the UK include WE Soda, payments fintech group CAB and AI specialist Palantir, which has chosen to bring its European headquarters to Britain.

Amid this ferment it may seem curious to question the sale of Middle East credit card processor Network International to Canada’s buyout firm Brookfield Asset Management in a $£2.8billion (£2.2billion) deal.

It is the second public-to-private buyout on the London Stock Exchange in just over a week, following the £4.5billion sale of veterinary pharma group Dechra to EQT.

The departure of Network International might appear no big loss, given that most customers are merchants in Africa and the Middle East. These are two of the fastest-growing neighbourhoods in the world and it is just the kind of enterprise which investors in London should be supporting.

It could be argued that it is bringing the magic of fintech to areas where the UK, through Standard Chartered and Barclays DCO, brought Western banking.

Selling out: The UK has become the world’s bargain basement

Paradoxically, the power behind the throne at Network International is Ron Kalifa, who sits on the governing Court of the Bank of England and also produced a post-Brexit report for the Tories aimed at building on the City’s expertise to bring financial innovation to public markets.

No one could be more qualified than Kalifa, given his role in founding Worldpay, now long lost in the entrails of US finance, which, arguably, was the ‘Arm Holdings’ of fintech payments. Moreover, Brookfield is not just any buyout firm but is chaired by former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney.

Money always speaks loudly when it comes to deals but there is a whiff of hypocrisy when grand figures, with the Bank of England imprimatur, work against the national interest. The argument is that the premium to the pre-takeover share price of Network International, at 64 per cent, made the deal irresistible. But is it really so generous?

New York shares trade at a 40 per cent premium to London’s All-Share index of 600 or so stocks, so the actually uplift on underlying value is 24 per cent, which is a far from a ‘must-accept’ offer. UK defined benefit pension funds have neglected London stocks since Gordon Brown removed the dividend tax relief in 1997, effectively ringing the death knell for equity investment.

Persuading defined contribution schemes, local authority pension funds and others to pick up the slack is a titanic task.

The UK has become the world’s bargain basement. Building world-class tech companies for the rest of this century, as happened in the past, is all but impossible.

Arm, Worldpay, Dechra and the like are simply sold to the highest bidder like a modest pair of bronzes on the BBC TV’s Flog It! None of this, in an era of rising economic nationalism, makes long-term sense.

Profiles in courage

Each time that a pusillanimous board decides to take the money and run I think of AstraZeneca.

When French-Aussie chief executive Pascal Soriot repelled a £70billion bid from Pfizer in 2014, who would have thought it would be worth £184billion nine years later – and the most valuable company on the FTSE 100?

Astra may have gained national attention for the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine but its subsequent successes with cancer care are inestimable. The great goal of pharma used to be the discovery of blockbusters, defined as compounds with sales of $1billion a year.

Astra’s tagrisso treatment is transforming cancer care and has reduced death rates for lung disease by 50 per cent.

Not surprisingly, sales are soaring and the forecast for it is $5.4billion (£4.4billion) this year.

That’s good for humanity – and demonstrates what happens when boards show bravery and investors stand firm.

Sanctions payday

Mervyn Davies took it upon himself to single-handedly save Russian private equity outfit Letter One – owner of natural health chain Holland & Barrett – from collapse when sanctions were imposed by the Government. As non-executive chairman, it looked like an act of altruism.

The truth turns out to be different, following the disclosure that he picked up £32.2m in pay and bonuses over the last two years.

The correct course of action?

Donate it to Ukrainian citizens suffering terrible privations caused by indiscriminate Russian aggression.

This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk