Webinar – China’s Involvement in British Nuclear Power

Dr Simon Taylor, Cambridge Judge Business School, Cambridge Judge Business School

The proposed new £16 billion nuclear power station at Hinkley Point C in Somerset cannot go ahead without Chinese funding. China, having built a large nuclear power industry at home, is now a world leader in nuclear power stations and wants to bring that expertise to the UK. With finance, project management expertise and their own advanced nuclear reactor technology, Chinese companies are keen to establish their credibility by building in the UK. Is this a good deal for the UK? Should the UK be depending on Chinese technology? The webinar will explain why the UK needs foreign help to achieve its energy policy goals and why China is probably the best place to find that help.

Speaker bio

Dr Simon Taylor is Director of the Master of Finance programme and Senior Faculty in Management Practice (Finance) at Cambridge Judge Business School. Simon spent nine years as an equity analyst at a number of investment banks, including BZW, JPMorgan and Citigroup, where he was involved in several major equity transactions and takeovers and led research teams covering the European and global utilities sectors. In 2001 he became Deputy Head of European Equity Research at JPMorgan where he was responsible for the technical and quantitative research teams and for the technology, media and telecoms sectors. He was a leading member of the team that set up JPMorgan’s global research centre in Mumbai, India in 2003. He has been a consultant to a number of hedge funds and to the London Stock Exchange. He teaches on the JPMorgan equities training programme each year. Simon was an Honorary Visiting Fellow of Cranfield School of Management in 2005 and 2006. He was previously a Fellow of St Catharine’s College and joint college lecturer in economic theory at St Catharine’s and Girton Colleges. In February 2007 he was Scholar in Residence at the Sigmund Weiss School of Business at Susquehanna University, Pennsylvania. In 2009 he won a Cambridge University Pilkington Teaching Prize.

Simon’s research interests covers infrastructure financing, particularly into financing of nuclear power and the behaviour of stock market. His book on the financial crisis in the UK nuclear power industry was published in 2007. Simon has been a consultant to the World Bank, London Stock Exchange and a number of hedge funds. He also taught executives from a number of Chinese financial institutions and is an advisor to the China Private Economy Research Centre.