The burning platform of Brexit
On Friday Britain will leave the EU, or at least partly as there are still months of trade negotiations to get through.
Ahead of the Prime Minister’s deadline for Brexit and amid announcements of Brexit coins and light shows, we held a round table with Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership and businesses from across Leeds City Region to take an apolitical look at what it could mean for businesses in the region.
Mandy Ridyard, financial director, Produmax commented, “To disrupt and do something new from a business perspective you typically need a burning platform or a burning ambition. Until now a lot of businesses particularly in the SME arena have been comfortable, but once you have one of those two things you start to change the dynamic.”
Does this mean that Brexit could create more opportunities for business? The leave campaigners believed so and Government believes so. But Chris Black, managing director, SoundLeisure expressed that it’s not a simple equation of Brexit = opportunity, saying:
“It does create opportunities Brexit, but it costs a lot of money to create those opportunities. Yes there are other countries out there to trade with, but the testing and the products that you need to develop cost money. To capture an opportunity when you’re already busy is hard as you need the time to come up with the ideas and actually put the money in to capitalise on it.”
The business community’s response to Brexit is to adapt. This is creating opportunities in some industries including automation and workspace providers which are seeing new clients. Natasha Barber-Evans chief operations officer, Wizu Workspace said:
“Companies that would have traditionally sought long lease holds for their offices with expensive fit outs are now just thinking differently. We’re finding them looking at places like workspaces which can give them that flexibility and agility to tackle this period.”
David Masters, OE highlighted that businesses haven’t been waiting for Brexit but have been proactively preparing for the good and bad that could come as a result: “We made our own plans, we weren’t waiting for Brexit to happen, we made plans for what we thought was best for OE’s future.”
He stated that despite Brexit OE has seen opportunities from overseas and in particular highlighted Europe. He commented: “We’ve seen 50% growth this year in Europe compared to a relatively flat UK.”
From a professional services stand point the commentary from both Grant Thornton and Clarion was clear- the opportunities and threats of Brexit are dependent upon the sector in which a business operates.
Stephen Crow, director at Clarion said: “Companies in the meat industry may be more worried about the rise of veganism and vegetarianism rather than Brexit. Or in the retail sector more focused on the decline of the high street. It appears the latter correlates more with the rise of online shopping rather than a decline in confidence due to Brexit.”
Rachel Engwell, partner at Grant Thornton gave an example of how it has set up joint ventures with European member firms. She stated: “Unless you’re registered in an EU Member State, then you can’t do work with the European Commission. As a firm we do quite a bit of work with the Commission, so we created a consortium which means we can continue to do this.”
If the mood around the table was reflective of the county and the country, then it’s one of positivity. Brexit perhaps has created what Mandy described as “a burning platform” for businesses and now there is a majority government one panellist exclaimed, “things should now get done.”
