Britain held back by its ‘Banana economy’, claims top investor

One of the UK’s biggest infrastructure investors has called Britain “a Banana economy” with an ethos of “Build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything (or anybody)”, but said there was a huge amount of capital available to change that.

Dominic Veney, finance director of Pension Insurance Corporation, the insurer, said: “We see no shortage of domestic capital to support viable projects. There just aren’t enough viable projects to invest in.”

He estimated that about £200 billion of fresh capital would be put to work over ten years as insurers such as PIC take over legacy pension schemes in the UK. Infrastructure and housing projects producing reliable income decades into the future were a perfect match for the liabilities, he said.

“Why are so few of these