Brexit Diary

By Fiona Czerniawska.

Churchill famously said after the Battle of El Alamein: “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” A year and a few months on from the UK’s referendum, that would be an apt description to employ here. It’s been a year in which we’ve heard clients wringing their hands with despair at what this means for their organisations, while simultaneously criticising consulting firms’ premature offers to help. We’ve also watched consultants attempting to seize the opportunity with one hand, while using the other to ward off the problems with attracting the best people, which will be inevitable once the immigration shutters descend.

By Zoë Stumpf.

Having just emerged—slowly—from the depths of the financial crisis, Brexit was arguably the last thing that the UK financial services industry needed. Eight years of dealing with onerous regulatory requirements and severe cost cutting–as well as the disruptive influence of digital and aggressive inroads by challenger banks–have taken their toll on the industry and left it in no need of this new challenge.

By Fiona Czerniawska.

Brexit? Article 50? We don’t care anymore. Or at least that’s the impression we’re getting from clients in the UK. With hard Brexit driving the political agenda and a real danger that we emerge from two years of wrangling with not a single trade agreement in place, many British businesses are deciding that they can’t afford to wait and see. Nothing about the political process to date would give a senior executive even a modicum of comfort that politicians have understood, or perhaps been honest about, the scale of the challenge ahead.