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Conservatives Suggest That UK Stock Market Underperformed Other Leading Markets In 2002

by Carla Johnson, Investors Offshore.com

07 February 2003

Speaking this week, shadow Chancellor Michael Howard described Prime Minister, Tony Blair's analysis of the falling UK stockmarket as 'a disgrace', according to a report in the Financial Times.

During Prime Minister's questions on Wednesday, Mr Blair suggested that shares in Britrain had fallen less than those in France or Germany during 2002, an assertion which Mr Howard later described as 'ill-informed and misleading'.

According to Conservative calculations, since the Labour Party came to power in 1997, the FTSE 100 index has underperformed the Dow Jones by 42%, and the S&P 500 by 31%. However, as the FT pointed out:

'The numbers can be used to tell many different stories. Mr Blair focused on 2002, the Treasury has been using comparisons of the markets' falls from their last peaks. On that measure, the FTSE is down just a little more than the S&P 500, and less than the indices for France, Germany, and Japan.'

Insisting that his figures were the more relevant, however, Mr Howard suggested that the increased regulatory and taxation burden imposed on British businesses under Labour has played a significant part in the stock market falls:

'You don't need to be a rocket scientist to understand that if you impose huge burdens of tax and red tape on business, then business is going to suffer and the economy is going to suffer, and the stock market is going to reflect that,' he argued.

http://search.ft.com/search/article.html?id=030206000735&query=tax&vsc_appId=totalSearch&offset=0&resultsToShow=10&vsc_subjectConcept=&vsc_companyConcept=&state=More&vsc_publicationGroups=FTFT&searchCat=0

 

 






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