Weekly Rundown - 29.01.23

I felt rather up beat whilst listening to the speech that Jeremy Hunt gave at Bloomberg this week. It had a boost of positivity and weighted optimism – let’s face it, we all need that right now as we are stepping into the 2nd month of 2023. No matter what our point of departure in speaking of future UK economic growth, we all want UK to succeed in achieving its goals, with so many of us playing an active role in the process. In the Finance Minister speech, the four ‘E’s stand for Enterprise, Education, Employment and Everywhere – sounds great! I am definitely here for a simple strategy tag line. In his speech, Jeremy Hunt got the inflation question out of the way before proceeding to discuss the four pillars of growth. It was a good call, as UK current position is still being debated with some reports saying that UK inflation has now peaked. Finance Minister himself, warned that that getting inflation below 5% this year will be tough, but reiterated that “The best tax cut right now is a cut in inflation”. Some substantial problem solving is needed to fix UK’s productivity issue, but make no mistake, UK has all the potential to become the next Silicon Valley, and we’re off with a promising start. The London / Oxford / Cambridge triangle has the largest number of tech businesses in the world outside San Francisco and New York. Based on the global startup ecosystem 2022 report, London alone is now one of the top tech hubs in the world. In 2021, the enterprise value of London’s startups, via IPOs or acquisitions, soared to a record-breaking US$88 billion. Report adds that in March 2022, the UK’s tech scene was valued at US$1 trillion, a milestone shared with the U.S. and China. That’s remarkable! Even in the backdrop of current regulatory climate, UK medtech startups are creating positive outlook – have a look at the list of top 100 medical and healthcare startups in UK. Every big business was a start-up once so I find it very inspiring.

Looking into the future potential, the revenue in the Medical Technology market in the United Kingdom is projected to reach US$19.65bn in 2023 with the market's largest segment being medical devices. It is forecasted to reach US$22.84bn by 2027 producing annual growth rate of 3.83%. There is 522 medical device companies that have their headquarters located in Silicon Valley, California, so it seems that UK has a really good shot at becoming the next medtech hot-spot. The revenue in the US Medical Technology market is projected to reach US$199.80bn in 2023 and US$236.80bn by 2027 producing an annual growth rate of 4.34%. UK is only 0.51% behind in this forecast. UK continues to offer research capabilities with universities that consistently attract global talent – so I understand where our Finance Minister is drawing his optimism from. I am certainly a believer. I deliberately focused on the positives this week, as I am sure you can tell, but as Alpesh Patel OBE said in his BBC interview Friday morning, all you need to do is to look at the data as opposed to the narrative, and you will be surprised.?