Gates to star at UK chancellor's entrepreneur summit

Bill Gates will be the star guest at "tycoon's summit" of top company bosses to be held in London this month, according to the Sunday Times. The conference, to be hosted by UK Chancellor Gordon Brown, is being pitched as an entrepreneur's summit, intended to help foster the spirit of enterprise and 'can do' in British industry.

In addition to his role of associating himself with big names like Gates prior to his forthcoming party leadership bid, Brown is also responsible for the public purse which has so amply funded the can-do culture of Microsoft UK. It is not entirely clear how Gordon intends to resolve this apparent contradiction, or indeed whether we should be expected to regard the elimination of competition, overcharging for your products and being convicted as a monopolist as useful first steps on the road to entrepreneurship.

Other big payslips expected are Jean-Pierre Garnier of GlaxoSmithKline, owner of one of the scariest remuneration packages in Britain, and Marjorie Scardino, CEO of FT publisher Pearson. the ST also mentions Unilever, AstraZeneca, Diageo, Wal-Mart, Monsanto, Goldin-Sachs and good old Eric Schmidt, now running success story Google despite not having thought of it first. There's entrepreneurship for you. ®