The City should ditch Pride celebrations and focus on its real job

Telegraph

9 hours ago

The multi-coloured flags are not flying as prominently as they once did. The LinkedIn pages are no longer festooned with symbols and the company's X page no longer reminds everyone of its solidarity with the cause, while at the same time corporate donations to parades and fairs are collapsing.
We are already halfway through Pride month, designed to promote the LGBTQ+ community, and it is already clear that the City and the wider corporate world is dialling down the celebrations. In reality, it is about time.
Sure, we all agree that everyone should be treated equally regardless of their sexuality. But the City is in steep decline – and it should get back to deal-making before it is too late.
The Pride celebrations are definitely quieter than usual among businesses this year. Law firms such as DLA Piper and Linklaters have all abandoned Pride logos on their LinkedIn pages, although in the past they were prominently displayed over the course of the month.
Likewise, PwC has chosen not to update its logo and so have EY and Deloitte, while KPMG only did so after being contacted by this newspaper.
Meanwhile, corporate funding for the events planned around the country is in free-fall, with corporate sponsorship of Pride events down by 50pc this year according to the UK Pride Organisers Network. There are reports of local events being cancelled after the contributions from companies dried up.
Indeed, Bloomberg reported earlier this month that 75pc of organisers had seen a fall in corporate backing and that Pride in London, the largest event in the UK, was at risk as businesses politely backed away.
One reason for that, of course, is US president Donald Trump.
In the US, his administration has clamped down on diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) spending –in many cases forcing companies to abandon their support for liberal causes or face exclusion from government contracts and applying moral and financial pressure on others to scale back their commitments.
The tactics might be rough but it is working.
It is noticeable, for example, that many of the law firms that are no longer visibly backing the Pride celebrations have significant operations in the US. And since the internet does not respect national boundaries, they may well have decided that it is prudent – and law firms are always cautious – to scale back their commitments on this side of the Atlantic just in case.
Trump may well have gone too far, as so often. And yet, it is surely right for the City to drop the high-profile support for Pride.
Sure, we can all agree that staff should be treated with respect, and treated equally, regardless of their sexuality or gender. But the high-profile 'rainbow-washing' of Pride month – which even many gay people now feel has been hijacked by extreme activists – had also become a distraction from the real work of the Square Mile.
In reality, the City is in a very perilous position right now.
The initial public offering (IPO) market has collapsed and listings are moving elsewhere. We saw that confirmed earlier this month when Wise, one of the most consistently successful technology companies in Europe, decided to move its primary listing from London to New York, And the Chinese fast-fashion giant Shein – which may be controversial but is still a major company – decided to list its shares in Hong Kong instead of London.
The number of companies listed in the UK's capital has fallen from 2,400 a decade ago to 1,600 now.
There are virtually no new listings to replace them, with 18 listings last year raising a mere £770m, an 18pc fall on a year earlier, and plenty of companies are still giving up and accepting takeover offers.
On current trends, the London market will go the way of the Liverpool and Manchester stock exchanges. It will be absorbed into New York in the same way that regional markets were absorbed into the City a hundred years ago.
Meanwhile, the non-doms are all leaving following the ending of tax breaks in the UK. And much of the hedge fund and wealth management industries will go with them.
The foreign exchange markets are still under threat from the European Union's determination to move trading and settlement within its own borders. Even pension funds may not be safe for much longer as Chancellor Rachel Reeves eyes them up as one of the few remaining pools of money she can raid, as she desperately searches around for more money to feed into a government machine with an insatiable appetite for more cash.
Indeed, it is getting to the point where the City's only remaining major business is financing and rolling over the Government's vast and growing debts. Everything else is facing an accelerating decline.
Those are the real challenges and a rainbow flag, no matter how well intentioned, does not do anything to fix any of them.
In reality, the City has always been a place that tolerated just about anything except losing money, You could be gay, bi or straight, wear what you liked, dress anyway that made you feel comfortable, get up to anything you felt like at the weekend and spend your bonus money any way you chose to so long as the profit and loss account was in good shape at the end of the week.
But the City no longer has the luxury of indulging fashionable causes or allowing resources to be wasted on issues that, while they may be important socially and some of the staff may personally feel very strongly about them, don't make any significant contribution to the growth of the business.
In reality, Pride month was just a distraction from the real challenges of doing more deals, creating new products and opening up new markets.
There won't be nearly so many high profile rainbow celebrations this month – and if we are being honest it is unlikely that anyone will miss them.