Cowdery pledges entire Resolution stake to charity

Clive Cowdery has promised to give 60% of the management profits from his life company consolidator business Resolution to a charitable foundation for the working poor.

He made the pledge to give away almost his entire stake in the business in an interview with the Guardian this morning.

The money will help fund the Resolution Trust, a charity which will focus on the plight of hard-working families.

Cowdery set up the trust five years ago with £20m from selling shares in the flotation of his first business, in which he bundled together closed life funds before selling them for £5bn to Hugh Osmond's Pearl Group.

The Resolution owner netted a personal fortune of about £150m in the deal.

However, he says the finance sector has become too big for the good of the economy, leaving Britain without an industrial base from which to provide jobs for semi-skilled labour.

About a third of the financial services is an "oligopoly" which has stunted the growth of business by charging exorbitant fees for raising capital, thereby robbing companies of the cash to invest and build businesses, Cowdery says.

"Bankers take roughly 3.5% in fees every time you sneeze. You raise £500m, that's £17.5m for them up front.

"They get the safe bit. They don't do anything. All this argument about creating wealth by creating risk capital is b*******. We need labour absorptive industries so that we can create jobs. That's the problem," he said.

Today, Labour leader Ed Miliband will make a keynote speech on the "squeezed middle" at the launch of Cowdery's commission on living standards which will look into what to do about the growing chasm between the rich and working poor in Britain.