Canary Wharf boss says child boomers have ‘pulled up drawbridge’ for younger

From his eyrie in One Canada Square, in London’s Docklands, Sir Nigel Wilson delivers a lacerating verdict on his fellow baby boomers. ‘Mine is the selfish, do-nothing generation,’ says the chairman of Canary Wharf Group, the office tower’s owner.

‘We got it all: the wealth, the house, the pension. Then we pulled up the drawbridge.’

Wilson, 69, warms to his theme: ‘Young people are not getting any of this. They are having to get massively into debt to achieve the same lifestyle. There is a growing inequality.’

His professional life has been driven by an almost messianic belief that the UK can create a better future for its citizens, through what he calls ‘inclusive capitalism’, directing investment to projects that create jobs and improve people’s lives.

Before joining Canary Wharf Group in 2024, he was chief executive of Legal & General, Britain’s biggest asset manager, for more than a decade. In that role, he ploughed billions of pounds into regenerating Britain’s towns and cities, including creating a £350 million innovation hub on the old Newcastle Brown Ale brewery site and a £200 million investment partnership with Oxford University.

Despite the pervasive national gloom, he is convinced the UK has enormous untapped potential.

The problem, he says, is not a lack of capital. It is a lack of courage.

‘Investors are not bold. All they see is the downside,’ he laments. ‘We have accumulated all this capital and now we need to invest it in younger generations. There is £6 trillion of long-term capital in this country. But our pension funds are putting it in the US or elsewhere instead of the UK – and are getting tax breaks for doing so.’

Britain, he says, systematically fails its own entrepreneurs, adding: ‘The Americans are investing in the best start-ups and scale-ups in the UK because they see value in them – we don’t. It’s fashionable to decry the UK stock market, but between 1985 and 2005 it slightly outperformed the US.

‘That changed because of choices we made. There is nothing inevitable about our underperformance. If we carry on like this, we’ll end up with some great companies, but they’ll be owned by Americans.’

Wilson keeps returning to generational failure, in which, with five daughters and five grandchildren he has a personal stake.

‘My generation – the selfish generation – can redeem itself by investing capital in young people starting and growing businesses. We’ve taken a lot away and that is how we can give back,’ he says.

‘Graduates are finding it hard to get jobs. They’re going to have to be more entrepreneurial. What is stopping them is lack of capital.’

Wilson grew up on a council estate in the North East and found his way out through education. When his father told friends in the pub his son had won a Kennedy scholarship to the world-renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology, they asked: ‘But isn’t there a tech in Darlington?’

After graduating from MIT, Wilson spent time in academia before moving into the corporate world. Stints at management consultancy McKinsey, consumer electronics group Dixons and events company United Business Media followed.

Since stepping down from L&G after 14 years – 11 as boss – he has shown no desire to slow down.

As well as Canary Wharf, Wilson is chair of Cambridge Innovation Capital, a deep tech and life science investor. A keen runner, he is training to have a crack at breaking a track record for his age group – probably the 400 metres – as he turns 70 this year.

He is also re-attaching himself to academia in anticipation of the technological upheaval he says is coming, adding: ‘The next ten years for the business and intellectual elite will be phenomenally interesting. There’ll be new people at the reins. The leaders of the big US tech companies are not young.

‘The same is true of the banks. What skills will be required? We need to work that out. I think I was very good in the last wave – but could I be good in this wave?

‘I don’t know. How do I stay relevant? Part of it is getting close to top scientists and thinking through what it means for business.’

Wilson embodies the power of ambition and education to transform lives – useful credentials for the man in the chair at Europe’s biggest regeneration project.

Canary Wharf, built on London’s derelict docks in the late 1980s and early 1990s, was mocked as a soulless outpost of banking, marooned at the end of bad transport links.

It thrived, but then came Covid and banks wondered if they needed offices at all. Instead of retreat, an American chief executive, Shobi Khan, appointed five years ago, doubled down. Wilson says: ‘He has drive, drive and more drive.’

Today Canary Wharf is a city within a city with homes, schools, parks, shops, cinemas, restaurants and theatres. Wilson has taken a flat here himself. Below ground is a shopping mall, where he points out a tin of ‘Sir Nigel’ biscuits. He seems delighted, even though they are not actually named after him.

He expects 70 million visitors this year, many for leisure rather than work. Universities are moving in and there is a scale-up hub on Level 39 of One Canada Square.

The banks are returning. Visa is taking 300,000sq ft at One Canada Square. Revolut is now in the former Reuters building and JP Morgan is building a 3 million sq ft HQ. Life sciences companies are arriving too. The Elizabeth Line is a game-changer for transport: it whisked me to Soho in 20 minutes.

What does he make of the increasingly prevalent view that London is a dangerous place with a crime problem getting out of hand? The City’s Lady Mayor, Dame Susan Langley, warned in a Mansion House speech that what she says are false narratives risk scaring off investors in the UK. ‘London is the best city in the world to live in,’ says Wilson. ‘And the UK one of the best countries to invest in. London has to recognise it has a crime problem and solve it, but Canary Wharf is a very safe place to work, live and play.’

‘This,’ adds Wilson, looking out across the development ‘is what I want to see across the UK. The gap between London and our secondary cities is still huge.

‘In every town and city I visit there are probably ten projects that are completely doable and financeable as a package. They would lift the place. But it doesn’t happen because they don’t have capital in the room. They haven’t built relationships with people like L&G, HSBC or JP Morgan.’

What if you’re a councillor somewhere like Middlesbrough and you don’t know anyone?

‘You have to get to know someone like me,’ he says. ‘You have to engage, not just moan and groan.’

Should there be a dating agency for it? ‘Yes, why not? What you see here at Canary Wharf is what we need to export across the country.’

The mechanisms already exist, he says: venture capital trusts, the Enterprise Investment Scheme and Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme, adding: ‘The fundamental problem is underinvestment on a massive scale in every town and city apart from London.

‘Manchester had the highest income per head in the world in the 19th century. Then the investment stopped.

‘There has been no growth in real per capita income for 20 to 25 years. That is not good enough. We are a savings nation, not an investment nation. America and China are investment nations. They make things happen.

‘I’m saying: invest in start-ups and scale-ups for your children and grandchildren.’