Preqin sale is a huge loss for Britain, says ALEX BRUMMER

Preqin is one of those City companies that most people have never heard of.

Founded by Mark O’Hare two decades ago as Private Equity Intelligence, it reaches into the parts of financial markets that others cannot.

In an extraordinary deal, O’Hare, who owns 80 percent of the equity through his Ring-cycle tribute company Valhalla Ventures, has sold out to Blackrock.

This follows an auction in which the US asset manager took on the London Stock Exchange Group and S&P Global.

The £2.55bn cash sale ahead of Thursday’s general election means O’Hare will instantly become one of Britain’s richest people, with a net worth of £2bn.

The timing of the deal almost certainly means he should be able to shield his newly acquired billions from new wealth taxes, which Labour is reported to be considering if elected.

O’Hare has another life in rural Suffolk, where he owns farmland and maintains a small plane that he uses to shorten his commute to London.

On spring mornings he can be seen trotting through fields soaked in mud up to his knees.

Preqin specialises in providing data on alternative assets and provides analytical tools that guide 170,000 professionals in investment strategies from offices in London and around the world.

The group describes itself as the home of alternative investments, extracting intelligence on private equity, venture capital, infrastructure, national resources and ESG.

This is the sort of thing that Jeremy Hunt and no doubt his future successors want risk-averse UK pension funds to get involved in.

Legal & General is one of the few asset managers so far to have committed to exposing the traditional pension funds it manages to more adventurous investments.

As part of the vast Blackrock empire worth more than $10 trillion, Preqin will be another loss of a thriving UK company to foreign ownership, with all the potential impact that could have on the UK’s burgeoning financial and business services sector.

Stockbroker Peel Hunt reports that the UK takeover market is like a “coiled spring” with 30 firm bids for FTSE-listed companies with an average offer price of £1.1bn.

Trading volume has accelerated amid the knowledge that there will be elections this year and concerns that the next government may exercise greater scrutiny over transactions.

Foreign deals are rarely good for jobs, the country’s tax revenue, intellectual property and, in some cases, the country’s economic and geopolitical security. Watchdogs need to bark louder.

French lettuce

Has the French tantrum passed? In recent trading, there has been a surge of relief at the suggestion that Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) could be prevented from taking power if opposition parties succeed in building alliances.

The yield gap between French and German 10-year bonds narrowed to 0.75 percentage points, compared with 0.85 before the weekend vote.

However, French bond yields have continued to rise and the interest rate gap has widened by half a percentage point since President Macron embarked on his electoral gamble.

If RN were to emerge as a clear winner, a period of turmoil would begin. The party’s expansive budget plans could trigger a burst in bond yields of a full point or more.

However, the expectation is that once in power, RN will water down its programme and could be constrained if opposition parties unite.

What is clear is that France’s problems are causing jitters across the eurozone and pushing up debt servicing costs everywhere.

France’s debt stands at 111 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), and Italy’s at 137 per cent, making the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecast for the UK of around 92 per cent look less stressful than one might think from our election debate.

Two months ago, Macron organised a summit under the slogan “Let’s choose France” and attracted around 13 billion pounds of foreign investment from Amazon, Microsoft and Britain’s AstraZeneca. They may be less enthusiastic now.

Sound of music

On a brighter note, I receive an upbeat WhatsApp message from a senior FTSE 100 executive returning from Glastonbury.

British musicians such as Coldplay, the world’s biggest band, are “taking the world by storm,” he says. British-Albanian artist Dua Lipa has “electrified” a global audience.

A round of applause for creative Britain!