Lords to question Vince Cable and CBI on foreign takeovers
The House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee will tomorrow hold one-off evidence sessions with Vince Cable MP, Secretary of State for Business Innovation and Skills as well as Katja Hall, Deputy Director of the CBI. The sessions will focus on foreign takeovers of British companies and the Public Interest.
The sessions follow the recent the high profile attempt by Pfizer to buy UK pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca.
The first evidence session will start at 2:30pm on Tuesday 8 July in Committee Room 1 of the House of Lords with evidence from:
- Professor Sir Tom Blundell, Fellow in Natural Sciences at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.
- Professor John Kay, Supernumerary Fellow in Economics at St John's College. Oxford.
- Katja Hall, Deputy Director General, CBI.
This will be followed at 3:30pm by evidence from:
- Vince Cable MP, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills.
In the first session the Committee will focus on whether the public interest test should be extended to include research and development in science, whether UK companies are more vulnerable to foreign takeovers than those of other countries and the motives for Pfizer's recent takeover bid for AstraZeneca, including whether it could accurately be described as an ‘accountants merger'.
With Dr Cable the Committee will look at whether the focus on competition in the UK's regulatory regime for mergers and takeovers is the correct approach, whether in light of the French government's recent intervention in General Electric's takeover of Alstom, other European countries operate by the same rules as the UK and what more the government can do to support UK companies including protection against short term investors buying shares and forcing through agreement to a sale.
