The Economist - UK (2022-03-19)

24 Britain The Economist March 19th 2022

shipis to help revive Britain’s flagging

stockmarket.Otherplatformsalso allow

investorstotradethesharesofunlisted

companies,fromthe marketfor private

sharesrunbyNasdaqtoBritish“crowdfun­

ders”suchasSeedrs.Butthelseisthefirst

totrytointegratesuchanofferingintoits

infrastructureofdataanalytics,regulatory

reporting,settlementandclearing.

Thehopeisthattheprivatefirmsjoin­

ingthenewexchangewillbemorelikelyto

listinLondonwhentheygopublic.A boost

issorelyneeded.In 2005 theCityhosted

20%oftheworld’sinitialpublicofferings;

by 2021 thathadfallento4%.Thelossin

2016 ofArmHoldings,oneofBritain’smost

successfultechcompanies,toSoftBank,a

Japaneseinvestmentgiant,dealta double

blow.Thefirm,whichhasitsheadquarters

inCambridge,isnowsettoreturntopublic

markets,butlookslikelytochooseNasdaq

overthelse.

RevivingtheCityisa taskthatthelse

cannotsucceedinalone.Itsexchangein

Paternoster Square is merely the focal

point of Britain’s stockmarket, not the

wholesystem.Itissurroundedbypension

schemesandretailinvestorswhoarebuy­

ingfewerBritishsharesthanever,toofew

researchanalystscapableofcoveringtech

firms,andtoomanyfundmanagersunin­

terestedingrowthequity.“The problem

withthelseisn’titstechoritsprograms,

whichareveryinnovative,”saysHussein

Kanji,a venturecapitalistinLondon.The

realissueisthatit“attractsanold­fash­

ionedinstitutionalbasethatdoesn’tfully

comprehendtheneweconomy”. n

Hostagerelease

A high price

O

nmarch16thNazaninZaghari­Rat­

cliffe left Tehran in a jet of the Royal Air

Force  of  Oman,  and  after  a  changeover  in

Muscat, landed at raf Brize Norton, an air

base  in  Oxfordshire,  shortly  after  mid­

night.  Waiting  for  her  were  her  husband

Richard  and  seven­year­old  daughter  Ga­

briella. The first thing she would want was

for him to make her a cup of tea, he told re­

porters; the house would need tidying, too.

A dual Iranian­British national, she had

been  arrested  in  2016  when  visiting  her

parents in Iran. She spent four years in pri­

son, and more time under house arrest, ac­

cused of plotting to overthrow the Iranian

regime,  a  claim  she  denied.  Solitary  con­

finement  and  blindfold  interrogations

took a toll on her mental health. Returning

to Britain with her was Anoosheh Ashoori

(the pair are pictured landing at Brize Nor­

ton), a fellow dual national arrested in 2017

and  accused  by  the  regime  of  being  an  Is­

raeli spy. A third prisoner, Morad Tahbaz, a

British­American­Iranian conservationist,

was  released  from  prison  on  furlough  to

his home in Tehran.

Their  release  is  another  victory  for

Iran’s record of abducting dual nationals to

extract  concessions  from  the  West.  The

British had negotiated for them alongside

the  settling  of  a  five­decade­old  debt  of

£394m ($518m). In 1971 the shah of Iran paid

for 1,500 British tanks and other bits of kit,

which  went  undelivered  after  the  Islamic

revolution  of  1979.  The  debt  had  been  up­

held by the International Court of Arbitra­

tion,  but  years  were  spent  wrangling  over

theamount,andhow to navigate interna­

tional  sanctions.  The  terms  are  confiden­

tial,  but  the  British  government  says  the

deal  complies  with  sanctions  and  anti­

money­laundering rules, and the proceeds

can be spent only on humanitarian aid. “I

suspect the Revolutionary Guards will say

to  themselves,  we  got  our  money  after  50

years by being tough with these bastards,”

says a former diplomat. 

The  release  was  met  with  jubilation  in

Parliament.  Opposition  mps queued  to

congratulate  Liz  Truss,  the  foreign  secre­

tary.  A  former  trade  secretary  who  prides

herself  as  a  dealmaker,  she  had  made  se­

curing  the  prisoners’  release  a  priority

upon taking office in September 2021. Soon

afterwards  she  raised  the  issue  with  her

Iranian  counterpart,  Hossein  Amirabdol­

lahian, in New York. Negotiations between

British and Iranian officials began in Teh­

ran,  and  concluded  in  Oman  in  February.

Tulip  Siddiq,  a  Labour  mp who  counts  Ms

Zaghari­Ratcliffe as a constituent, said Ms

Truss was the first foreign secretary to ac­

knowledge  a  link  between  the  imprison­

ment and the debt. Britain wanted to work

with Canada and other g7 nations, said Ms

Truss,  to  stop  “arbitrary  detention  being

used by countries to get their own way”.

The affair had become an acute embar­

rassment for the government, thanks to Mr

Ratcliffe’s  dogged  campaigning.  Last  au­

tumn  he  held  a  three­week  hunger  strike

outside  the  Foreign  Office.  Boris  Johnson,

the  prime  minister,  was  accused  of  hand­

ing the regime a pretext to prolong her de­

tention  when  he  declared  in  2017,  as  for­

eign secretary, that she was “simply teach­

ing  people  journalism”—which  she  and

her employer, the Thomson Reuters Foun­

dation, a charitable organisation indepen­

dent of the news­media group, denied.

Ms  Truss  credited  the  breakthrough  to

the  formation  of  a  new  Iranian  govern­

ment  under  Ebrahim  Raisi  last  year.  That

allowed  a  “reset”,  in  which  the  two  sides

declared  their  resolve  to  fix  outstanding

problems. Diplomats think the settlement

is an encouraging sign for talks on reviving

the deal on Iran’s nuclear programme. It is

unlikely the American government would

have endorsed such a large payment unless

the  big  issues  with  Iran  had  been  settled,

says  Esfandyar  Batmanghelidj,  a  visiting

fellow at the European Council on Foreign

Relations, a think­tank. “It is a positive sig­

nal. It is one of the ways that Iran is able to

demonstrate thatitwants to turn the page

after  several  yearsofvery  significant  ten­

sion with the West.”n

After a debt is settled, prisoners of Iran return to Britain

And now for that cup of tea