As a former City lobbyist and known face around the Square Mile, Emma Reynolds was seen by many as the favoured pick for City minister when Labour swept to power in July.
Standing in the way, however, was Tulip Siddiq. The Prime Minister’s constituency neighbour and long-time ally had held the role on the opposition benches since 2021 despite no experience of working in the City.
Reynolds was instead handed a newly carved out cross-departmental pensions brief, straddling the Treasury and department for work and pensions, and tasked with channelling a flood of cash from the country’s retirement funds into both start-ups and London’s ailing stock market.
Now, six months and a scandal later, Reynolds has found herself in the place where scores in the City had wanted her to begin with.
So who is the new City minister?
Staffordshire-born and Oxford-educated Reynolds is part of the 2024 intake but has history on the Labour frontbenches.
After an early career as a Brussels lobbyist, she won the seat of Wolverhampton North East for Labour at the 2010 general election and went on to serve as a shadow junior foreign office minister under Ed Miliband.
She resigned from her positions following the election of Jeremy Corbyn to Labour leader in 2015 and went on to back a challenge from Owen Smith the following year.
It was on losing her seat in the Tory landslide of 2019 that she became a familiar face in the Square Mile. She joined trade body TheCityUK as managing director of policy, shaping the group’s relationship with Westminster on issues like pension investment and revitalising Britain’s public markets.
After winning a return to parliament as the MP for Wycombe in July – and a spot on the government front benches – her former employer was quick to back her.
“As a former colleague, we know that she will make a significant impact in her new role,” said Miles Celic, chief executive of TheCityUK. “We look forward to engaging with her and her team to support a review of pensions and their reform.”
Pension reform
Privately, City figures say she took on much of the heavy-lifting in the government’s financial services reform agenda while Siddiq herself had been conspicuously absent.
Reynolds spearheaded the government’s pension investment review with the aim of boosting investment from retirement funds into British companies. In her maiden speech to a group of City grandees at the London Stock Exchange in September, her list of priorities was instructive.
“I have two main objectives, which are very simple to explain, but admittedly more complicated to deliver,” she said. “First, to increase pension investment into UK productive assets, supporting our capital markets as they in turn support our firms to grow and expand and drive growth and jobs across the country.
“Second, at the same time to improve the retirement outcomes of future pensioners, which everyone in this room and many millions of savers have a stake in.”
The fact that boosting investment took priority over safeguarding retirement payouts was seen as a bold – and welcome – gambit by some.
While her review formed the basis of Rachel Reeves’ Mansion House speech, and paved the way for plans to shake-up of the country’s local council pension funds, many were hoping it would go further and force allocation into the British companies.
Now in the role of City minister, they’ll be hoping that vim translates into action.
