A former protégé of Mike Lynch has been named as the Government’s new investment minister, bringing an end to a drawn-out search to fill the position.
Poppy Gustafsson, 42, will take up the role ahead of Sir Keir Starmer’s flagship Investment Summit beginning on Monday.
Ms Gustafsson is best known as the co-founder of UK cybersecurity giant Darktrace, of which Mr Lynch was a key backer before his death in the Bayesian yacht tragedy earlier this summer.
Her appointment comes after she recently stepped down as chief executive of the London-listed business following its £4.4bn sale to US private equity firm Thoma Bravo.
She said: “I have first-hand experience of building and scaling a business here in the UK and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to share with the international investment community what I already know to be true; the UK is a great place to do business.”
She will become the first woman to hold the investment minister role, which will also grant her a peerage in the House of Lords.
Previous investment ministers include former Standard Life chairman Lord Gerry Grimstone, and Lord Dominic Johnson, an ex-fund manager who co-founded Somerset Capital alongside Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Despite Ms Gustafsson’s tech background, the Prime Minister will hope her experience building a vast tech business and working with overseas funds will boost efforts to catalyse investment in the UK.
Before listing Darktrace on the London Stock Exchange in 2021, she managed the firm while it was owned by a consortium of private equity backers, including America’s KKR and Japan’s SoftBank.
The investment minister position has been vacant ever since Labour came to power in July, with the former frontrunner pulling out of the process for financial reasons.
Benjamin Wegg-Prosser turned down the position owing to his desire to maintain his private sector interests. He is the co-founder of Global Counsel, a consulting firm which he co-founded with Labour peer Lord Mandelson.
Filling the position was seen as vital ahead of the investment summit kicking off on Monday, which will attract dozens of international chief executives from across the world.
The investment minister’s main task will be drumming up support from international investors to plough their cash into the UK.
This includes feeding into a beefed-up version of the Office for Investment (OFI), which is a unit of Government that helps overseas investors navigate Britain’s business environment.
The Government said it would create a “larger and better-equipped organisation” and establish a new OFI Board chaired by Ms Gustafsson to guide the body.
Following her appointment on Thursday, Sir Keir said: “I am delighted to welcome Poppy Gustafsson as our new investment minister – an accomplished entrepreneur who brings invaluable experience to the role.
“We’re upgrading the Office for Investment to ensure it is fit for purpose and has the capability it needs to make the UK the first choice for investment and the best place in the world to do business, which is central to our mission to drive growth and make people better off.”
Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds added: “Poppy has shown she knows firsthand what it takes to start and grow a successful international business.
“Her private sector expertise will be vital in ensuring we attract more valuable investment into Britain and these changes show this Government’s growth mission will prioritise what businesses need to thrive in the UK and boost our economy.”
Ms Gustafsson, a mathematics graduate who trained as a Chartered Accountant, entered the tech industry in the 2000s by working for Hermann Hauser, the venture capitalist who founded Cambridge chipmaker Arm.
She later joined software giant Autonomy, where she worked under Mr Lynch.
It was then at the age of 30 that she co-founded Darktrace in 2013, with Mr Lynch serving as a founding investor through his business Invoke Capital.
However, the relationship between Darktrace and My Lynch later sparked controversy after he was accused of fraud following the sale of Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard in 2011.
The tech entrepreneur was cleared of all fraud charges in June earlier this year, three months before his death in Sicily, Italy.