FIDELITY International, one of Britain’s most powerful fund managers, is bankrolling the Conservative Party to the tune of £50,000 a quarter.

News of the firm’s donation of £150,500 over the last nine months of 2004 came as the Tories claimed a big increase in support from the City during the past few months.

Howard Flight, deputy party chairman and Michael Howard’s special envoy to the City, said that City support and donations were both up, boosted by anger over excessive regulation.

“The 20 per cent of the City who in the past flirted with Tony Blair are now very much back on-side. It’s very hard to find anyone apart from Ronald Cohen (the multimillionaire founder of Apax, the private equity house) who still supports Labour,” he claimed.

Fidelity said of its gift, one of the biggest by a company: “We wanted to see issues important to us debated at national level.” It specified the collapse in savings levels as a key concern.

The donations — of £50,000 or more in each of the past three quarters — are thought to have been agreed by senior executives.

The donations were approved by Fidelity shareholders, who include the billionaire Johnson family of the US, as well as UK staff.

Fidelity exercises considerable power in the boardrooms of many UK companies and was one of four investors in Deutsche Börse that successfully put pressure on it to pull out of its £1.3 billion pursuit of the London Stock Exchange.

LEADING DONORS

Tory donors in the Square Mile
George Magan (ex-Hawkpoint) £742,009
Simon Robertson (Goldman Sachs) £50,000
Michael Spencer (Icap) £41,809
Patrick Evershed (New Star) £11,624
Sir Martyn Arbib (ex-Perpetual) £10,000
Brian Winterflood £10,000
Stanley Fink (Man Group) £1,000

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