Exclusive: Starmer and Macron assemble top bosses for summit
Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron are planning to bring together 20 of their countries’ top business leaders for a cross-sector gathering as part of the French President’s first state visit to the UK, City AM can reveal.
Set to take place on Wednesday, chief executives and founders from France and Britain will convene in London while Macron is a guest of the Royal family, to discuss deepening economic and industrial ties between the two countries.
The French President and Starmer will be joined by Chancellor Rachel Reeves and 10 bosses from each country hailing from a variety of the two nations’ priority sectors, including tech, artificial intelligence, finance and life sciences.
A source at one of the businesses attending told City AM the exact logistics and agenda are still being thrashed out by officials, but that their firm’s chief executive had been allocated a theme relating to their sector to discuss during the meeting.
The summit is the first of its kind organised by the Starmer administration since it took office a year ago, and is further evidence of his bid to deepen economic ties with Britain’s European neighbours, and leverage diplomacy to drive economic growth.
Last month, the government unveiled its fresh trade strategy – the first since Brexit – containing a host of measures aimed at slashing barriers to trade with Europe. And at a recent trade summit hosted by the British Chambers of Commerce, foreign secretary David Lammy told delegates he would be giving ambassadors growth targets in an attempt to turn his Foreign Office into an “engine” of the UK economy.
But the summit, which will take place over lunch in central London half way through Macron’s stay in Britain, also comes as the UK and France jostle to position themselves as the undisputed tech and business powerhouse of Europe.
Paris is becoming an increasingly fertile breeding ground for successful AI firms, with globally renowned start-ups like Mistral AI and Pigment now worth an estimated $6bn and $1.9bn respectively.
And at the country’s recent Vivatech festival in June, Nvidia boss Jensen Huang announced a multibillion dollar partnership with Mistral to increase Europe’s artificial-intelligence computing capacity by a factor of 10 in just two years.
Macron hailed the announcement as a “game-changer”, and said it would boost the country’s sovereignty over the fledgling technology.
Huang’s investment with Mistral in Paris far outstripped the push he announced a week earlier at London’s competing corporate summit, Tech Week. Flanked by Starmer and investment minister Poppy Gustafsson, the AI kingpin launched an ‘AI industry forum’ in partnership with major firms like BAE Systems and BT, but stopped short of committing to a cash injection into Britain.
The government declined to comment.