The session opened with a presentation by John Forbes, outlining the conclusions of the original roundtable and some brief observations on what has happened since. Whilst there are often some changes between the initial roundtable and the full forum, it is the first time that the country has experienced complete fiscal meltdown. At the time of the original roundtable, Liz Truss had only just become Prime Minister, and immediately after the roundtable, the news came through that her Majesty  Queen Elizabeth II had sadly died earlier in the afternoon.

Even on 8th of September, the participants gathered against a background of increasing economic uncertainty – a stumbling underlying economy teetering on recession, discretionary retail demand including online weakening, rising inflation and rising interest rates. Immediately prior to our roundtable, the share price of UK FTSE 350

margin calls in respect of their Liability-Driven Investment (LDI) arrangements. James Bowler, a Treasury civil servant with over twenty years’ experience was given the role of Permanent Secretary to the Treasury instead of Antonia Romeo. A week later Kwarteng and his second-in-command Chris Philp had gone too, and Jeremy Hunt had completely ripped up the mini-budget. By the time of the forum, Liz Truss had gone as Prime Minister to be replaced by Rishi Sunak, and the markets had been reassured earlier in the afternoon by the announcement that Jeremy Hunt was continuing as Chancellor.

This was followed by a lively panel discussion. Despite the short-term reversion to sanity, the longer-term challenges highlighted at the initial roundtable remain as looming as ever. It was not therefore the cheeriest of panel discussions. The problems are global, but there was a broad

she expected these assets to feature highly in the league table of industry sentiment.

There was a robust discussion, including extensive audience participation, on the thorny question of ESG and the feasibility of funding the transition to Net Zero in an environment of lower returns but rising construction costs. Will this result in more “stranded assets” that are effectively rendered worthless as the cost of remediation will exceed the remediated value of the assets? In assessing transition risk, the extensive work undertaken by the ULI in its Europe-wide C Change programme was flagged (see here).

Following the debate, the discussions continued into the evening during the networking drinks.