Inside a laboratory at AstraZeneca, which is currently Britain’s most valuable company. Credit: Peter Byrne/PA via Alamy
The UK government says it wants to make Britain one of the top three places in the world to create, invest in and scale-up a fast-growing technology business. Launching the country’s industrial strategy earlier this year, ministers set themselves an ambitious target: to produce a domestic trillion-dollar company by 2035.
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Last week, a report from a House of Lords committee poured cold water on the idea, arguing that the UK science-and-technology sector is, in fact, “bleeding to death”. The report warned that once a technology company reaches a certain level of success it’s likely to move to the United States. And with it would go the associated prosperity, including jobs and tax revenue.
So, can British science really produce a trillion-dollar technology company? And is such a goal even a good idea?
Not everybody thinks so. “It’s a really silly target,” says Giles Wilkes, a senior fellow at the Institute for Government think tank who was a special adviser on industrial and economic policy to Theresa May when she was prime minister. “But it absolutely bewitches politicians.”
It is possible, however, he adds. The chances of such a UK corporate giant emerging within 20 years are about one in four, he says. “You never know, there might be some version of an obesity drug or something that can do it.”
Size isn’t everything
Measured as market capitalization — the combined value of all traded shares — a trillion-dollar company would be almost four times the size of pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, Britain’s current biggest firm. Companies that reach the trillion-dollar mark often do so by exploiting a monopoly position in a large domestic market, Wilkes says.
“That’s of dubious use to the whole economy. Companies that have gone from half a trillion dollars to three or four trillion dollars have not generated widespread prosperity,” he says. “It’s not the same as economic growth.”
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