Coronavirus: City grandees join SME recapitalisation taskforce
Sir John Kingman and Lord Blackwell will be members of the City鈥檚 ReCapitalisation Group, Sky News understands.
Monday 20 April 2020 13:26, UK
Some of the biggest names in the City have been drafted in to devise a plan to recapitalise thousands of small businesses forced to resort to debt funding to steer them through the COVID-19 crisis.
Sky News has learnt that a taskforce orchestrated by TheCityUK, the trade association, will include figures such as Sir John Kingman, the chairman of Legal & General, who played a key role at the Treasury during the 2008 banking crisis.
Lord Blackwell, the Lloyds Banking Group chairman, will also be a member of the committee set up to oversee the work of the new ReCapitalisation Group (RCG), according to insiders.
The panel has been established to formulate a way forward for the glut of companies which emerge from the coronavirus outbreak saddled with debt they have taken on to aid their chances of survival.
Chaired by Sir Adrian Montague, the Aviva chairman, it will also include Citi executive James Bardrick; Catherine McGuinness, policy chair at the City of London Corporation; James Palmer, chair and senior partner of the legal giant Herbert Smith Freehills; Schroders' chief executive, Peter Harrison; and Nikhil Rathi, chief executive of the London Stock Exchange.
Omar Ali, EY's financial services managing partner and chair of the trade body's long-term competitiveness group, has been asked to lead the technical aspects of the RCG.
Sir Adrian's involvement is logical because of his role chairing TheCityUK's leadership council, but his former job as chairman of 3i Group, the listed private equity investor, is also relevant to the challenge facing the RCG.
3i was created after the Second World War as the Industrial and Commercial Finance Corporation to back small and medium-sized companies that could not access public equity markets.
The new working group is expected to evaluate whether the mass of companies which utilise the government's emergency aid programmes, such as the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS), will require wholesale recapitalisation.
Sky News revealed earlier this month that new capital could emerge in the form of equity which ranks above that of existing shareholders, retail bonds or another form of equity.
Andrew Bailey, the Bank of England governor, has asked to be kept informed about the progress of the work.
Insiders pointed out that many of the business-owners which were being forced to borrow to see them through the crisis had never needed debt facilities before.
Other trade bodies, including UK Finance and the CBI, were also involved in the discussion about large-scale corporate recapitalisations.
Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, has launched several bailout initiatives to keep British industry alive during the pandemic.
The Covid Corporate Financing Facility has been set up to enable larger companies with an investment-grade credit rating to raise liquidity by selling their commercial paper to the Bank of England.
CBILS, meanwhile, is a loan scheme aimed at companies with a turnover of up to £45m, offering interest-free and fee-free loans from participating banks for the first 12 months.
A larger version of that programme, providing loans of up to £50m, was launched last week.
The chancellor has also unveiled a job retention scheme enabling employers to 'furlough' their workers, with up to 80% of their wages paid by the state until the end of June.
Sky News revealed at the weekend that a further rescue package to pool loans made to sub-investment grade companies is also under consideration at the Treasury.
None of those involved with the RCG would comment on Monday.