I'm not sure if many people remember John Moulton, he used to appear on TV regularly as the voice of business. He was involved in various takeovers, some hostile as I recall but he was generally regarded as the archetypal, aggressive multi-millionaire entrepreneur with his finger on the pulse. Moulton backed Brexit which doesn't say a lot for his judgement in my opinion. He is in the news again (HERE) saying that Brexit is "far more complicated than I imagined". It's in a Guernsey newspaper so I assume he's a tax exile.
Yes, that's right, he has now discovered that when people were telling him before the referendum that Brexit was far more complicated than he imagined, it was actually far more complicated than he imagined. Well, fancy that. Who knew?
Moulton, described at the time as a venture capitalist, even did a head-to-head on a live streamed FaceBook debate during the 2016 campaign with Richard Reed, the founder of the Innocent Drinks brand, to argue the case for Brexit (HERE). Presumably he told the viewers it was all very simple.
In March 2016, he was one of 250 businessmen to sign a letter published by Vote Leave supporting Brexit and reported by the BBC HERE. The same report carries a couple of fascinating quotes by prominent Vote Leave supporters.
Matthew Elliott, Vote Leave's chief executive, said: "Vote Leave will make that case, that whilst the EU might be good for big multinationals, for smaller businesses it acts as a job destruction regulatory machine". Note employment is at a 40 year low, close to 4%.
And John Longworth is quoted as saying, "If we Vote Leave, liberated from the shackles of EU membership, jobs will be safer, Britain will be able to spend our money on our priorities and we can look forward to faster growth and greater prosperity in the future." Since when growth has slumped. So much for their forecasting skills.
On the day after the referendum Moulton, founder of private equity firm Better Capital, told The Financial Times that the Luxembourg-based European Investment Fund is the largest investor in UK venture capital firms and warned (HERE) the European fund "would probably stop investing in the UK" if Britain left the EU.
Next, in April 2017 the FT reported (HERE) that Moulton, was worried his industry faces an imminent and permanent loss of capital following the UK’s divorce from the EU. He feared "Britain’s buyout industry is set to lose £250m in legal and accounting fees annually. These fees are now at risk, in Mr Moulton’s view, if a “reasonable proportion of deals move from London to other European jurisdictions”.
Having urged everyone over the cliff he is now surprised to learn it's much more painful than he imagined.
A prize pillock.
