Bloomberg (March 13)
“Whatever happens on March 29—a no-deal Brexit, a delay to the departure or some kind of agreement—the U.K. faces a slow but steady erosion to its position as the European center of looking after other people’s money….. However Brexit plays out, the U.K. fund management industry will be a long-term loser from the fallout.”
Forbes (November 16)
“The looming prospect of no-deal Brexit is already spooking markets. Sterling tanked today, and the cost of CDS protection on U.K. government debt rose. Shares in Britain’s state-owned bank RBS fell by 9%.”
Tags: Brexit, CDS protection, Debt, Gilts, Looming, Markets, No-deal, Prospect, RBS, Shares, Spooking, Sterling, Tanked, U.K., UK
Forbes (September 20)
“Britain’s non-binding resolution, to leave the EU (aka Brexit) is moving forward because one weak-willed and weak-minded politician, U.K. Prime Minister Teresa May, is treating the 2016 opinion poll as legally binding. It wasn’t and isn’t.” It is time for the Prime Minister to “exit Brexit” and “reverse the U.K.’s mistake.”
Tags: Britain, EU, Exit Brexit, May, Mistake, Non-binding resolution, Reverse, U.K.
Institutional Investors (June 11)
“When the U.K. secedes from the EU, it will abandon 70 years of globalization. It will turn away from a world order that increasingly relies on supranational institutions to check the power of extremely wealthy individuals and corporations like Apple and Facebook, with market capitalizations far bigger than the GDPs of most nations.” The potential consequences of Brexit leave many in the City of London feeling threatened, but there is “a coterie of hard-right, wealthy businessmen” who are delighted about “rolling back globalization to protect their positions of power — all in the name of populism.”
Tags: Brexit, Consequences, EU, GDP, Globalization, London, Market caps, Populism, Power, Supranational institutions, U.K., Wealthy businessmen, World order
Fortune (January 28)
Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of Ikea, died at 91. With an estimated net worth of $58.7 billion, he was the world’s eighth-richest person. Renowned for living miserly, he created a revolution in furnishings. In 2005, he was named “the most influential taste-maker in the world” by the U.K. style magazine Icon, which wrote, “‘if it wasn’t for Ikea, most people would have no access to affordable contemporary design. The company has done more to bring about an acceptance of domestic modernity than the rest of the design world combined.’”
Tags: Affordable, Contemporary, Design, Icon, Ikea, Influential, Kamprad, Miserly, Net worth, Rich, Taste-maker, U.K.
Institutional Investor (June 4)
Due to Brexit, “sovereign investors now consider the U.K. less attractive than they did a year ago and are instead favoring investments in Germany and India as part of a broader move to so-called safe haven markets.” The change in sentiment was identified through a survey of “sovereign wealth funds, state-owned pensions, and central banks polled by Invesco.”
Tags: Brexit, Central banks, Germany, India, Invesco, Investors, Pensions, Safe havens, Sentiment, Sovereign, U.K.
Euromoney (March 24)
“The UK economy seems at last to be suffering from the erosion of purchasing power by sterling-induced inflation. All of this smacks of stagflation, a constitutional crisis and rising political risk. UK gilts will suffer.”
Tags: Constitutional crisis, Economy, Erosion, Gilts, Inflation, Political risk, Purchasing power, Stagflation, Sterling, Suffering, U.K.
Institutional Investor (June 23)
“The referendum on U.K. membership in the European Union continues to dominate market risk narratives, with both equity futures and the pound sterling strengthening in early trading, suggestion a degree of confidence among investors that the nation will remain in the EU.”
Tags: Confidence, Equity futures, EU, Investors, Market risk, Membership, Referendum, Sterling, Trading, U.K.
Institutional Investor (February Issue)
“Over the past five years, as Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland in the U.K., UBS and Credit Suisse in Switzerland and even Deutsche Bank have pared back their investment banking activities, U.S. banks have powered ahead in the European arena in just about every sector, including the all-important FICC and M&A advisory categories.”
Tags: Barclays, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, FICC, Investment banking, M&A, RBS, Switzerland, U.K., U.S. Europe, UBS
Wall Street Journal (April 10)
“The U.K. and U.S. economies are recovering, and pessimistic predictions that fiscal consolidation was incompatible with economic recovery have turned out to be comprehensively wrong,” writes George Osborne. The UK’s chancellor of the exchequer is equally upbeat that the both countries will surpass the “gloomy arguments” being put forth by pessimists of secular stagnation. Free markets continue to be the “engines of progress…. we can secure lasting economic growth and ensure that all of our citizens benefit.”
Tags: Chancellor, Citizens, Economies, Free markets, George Osborne, Growth, Predictions, Progress, Recovering, Recovery, Secular stagnation, U.K., U.S., Upbeat
