The Guardian (October 23)
“Weak, depressed and despondent” describes the government benches as Prime Minister Theresa May made her “now-ritual update” to the Commons “on the continued lack of progress in the Brexit negotiations.” The update has “become as painful for the Conservative party as it has for the prime minister.” That said, it should be noted that some “deranged Brexiters” found a chance to roar “their approval at Britain becoming worse off than Mongolia and Mauritania.”
Tags: Brexit, Commons, Conservatives, Depressed, Deranged, Despondent, Government, Mauritania, May, Mongolia, Progress, Update, Weak
IPE Real Assets (October Issue)
With the uncertainty of Brexit, “REITs have been trading at discounts to net asset value (NAV) of around 15% to 25%.” Faced with scant opportunities, some are electing to return money to unitholders through buybacks or special dividends. But there is clearly a “disconnect between sentiment in the public markets and private markets.” As REITs encounter “limited opportunities in the office space, institutional investors, particularly global investors, have made many high-profile acquisitions.” This includes “the UK’s largest-ever office deal…in July when Hong Kong’s Infinitus Property Investment bought the iconic ‘Walkie Talkie’ building at 20 Fenchurch Street for £1.28bn.”
Tags: Acquisitions, Brexit, Buybacks, Disconnect, Discounts, Dividends, Hong Kong, Infinitus, Institutional investors, NAV, REITs, Sentiment, UK, Uncertainty, Unitholders
Reuters (October 12)
“Nerves are fraying in the Brexit talks, negotiators are trying to work out if the other side is bluffing about walking away, and a ticking clock is fast narrowing British options come March 2019.”
Reuters (August 6)
“Watching the slow-motion crash of Britain’s exit negotiations with the European Union is a disconcerting experience. A state that once ran a global empire is looking second-rate.” Realism has all but been abandoned. “The government’s implausible expectations about what it may be able to achieve” reveal a “dismaying lack of historical and strategic understanding about how Britain lost its clout outside the European club more than half a century ago.”
Tags: Brexit, Clout, Crash, Disconcerting, EU, Expectations, Global empire, Implausible, Negotiations, Realism, Strategic, UK, Understanding
Bloomberg (August 29)
“Brexit is beginning to look like a classic case of a mountain giving birth to a mouse” and, except for losing its say in EU affairs, little is likely to change. “The U.K. will simply lose its vote in the EU. The rest will remain as it is now for an indefinite period during which a new trade deal will be discussed in the standard EU fashion — slowly, deliberately, with each of the 27 EU countries working through its own agenda until there’s a consensus.”
Tags: Agenda, Brexit, Consensus, Deliberate, EU, Slow, Trade deal, UK
Reuters (July 27)
“British-based investment firms’ long-standing ability to manage billions of euros of assets elsewhere in Europe could be threatened by Brexit.” Newly issued EU guidance suggests regulators will crack down on “delegation” with the aim of preventing investment firms from “setting up ‘empty shell’ subsidiaries in an EU country, to allow them to continue serving European clients, but leaving the bulk of their management staff and operations in London.”
Tags: Assets, Brexit, Clients, Delegation, EU, Europe, Euros, Guidance, Investment, London, Shell subsidiaries, UK
The Economist (July 22)
“Despite the frantic political activity in Westminster…the country has made remarkably little progress since the referendum in deciding what form Brexit should take. All versions, however “hard” or “soft”, have drawbacks…. Yet Britain’s leaders have scarcely acknowledged that exit will involve compromises, let alone how damaging they are likely to be. The longer they fail to face up to Brexit’s painful trade-offs, the more brutal will be the eventual reckoning with reality.”
Tags: Brexit, Brutal, Compromises, Drawbacks, Frantic, Hard, Painful, Progress, Reality, Reckoning, Referendum, Soft, Trade-offs, Westminster
The Guardian (July 17)
“Desperate with hope,” many Brits are “drawn to the crescendo of signals that Brexit can’t and won’t happen, to stories that say the sheer impossibility of leaving the EU gets clearer by the day.” The signals are everywhere. “Fall off the EU cliff and put a third of our just-in-time food supply at risk. No flying to the EU, warns Ryanair, as easyJet moves its new HQ to Austria….car sales are down 10%, credit card debt up 10%, wages are falling behind rising inflation.” Yet even as the UK’s economy “sinks, while the EU’s charges ahead,” there is no guarantee that Brexit will ultimately prove reversible.
Tags: Austria, Brexit, Car sales, Credit cards, Debt, Desperate, EasyJet, Economy, EU, Food supply, Hope, HQ, Ryanair, UK, Wages Inflation
Financial Times (July 5)
If Japan and the EU sign their free trade agreement, it “will stand as a powerful rejection of Donald Trump’s protectionist posture…. It will also highlight the challenge facing Britain. A hard Brexit would leave UK companies in some sectors on worse trade terms with their neighbour Europe than Japanese competitors halfway around the world.” There’s no shortage of irony as “the UK and the US risk being left behind — or forced to rethink their repudiation of the global order they built.”
Tags: Brexit, Competitors, EU, Free trade, Global order, Japan, Protectionist, Trump, UK
The Guardian (July 2)
“As the true extent of the Brexit farce becomes more apparent, it is now open warfare between the Brexiters, while the rest of the world…look on in sympathetic bewilderment.” Amid growing “evidence for concern about Brexit-induced potential loss of trading and investment opportunities,” there are growing hopes that the “transition” may be extended indefinitely.
Tags: Bewilderment, Brexit, Farce, Investment, Loss, Opportunities, Sympathetic, Trading, Transition
