Media Coverage

In an era when business leaders are said to be shorn of personality and charisma the British aviation market stands out as an exception. Dame Carolyn McCall, the outgoing CEO of easyJet, is a case in point (declaration time – she was the CEO when I chaired the Guardian Media Group).  

She leaves in her condensation trail an industry that is struggling to come to terms with the impact of Brexit, and which has perhaps more than any other taken advantage of European integration over the past 40 years.

While Theresa May is walking in the Italian Alps, ministers are working out Brexit strategy in her absence. By the time she returns, a grand bargain in her cabinet to deliver Britain’s exit from the EU will have taken shape.

“It is almost impossible in my experience to find a European official who thinks the conditions for a transition can be negotiated at any level of detail,” said Stephen Adams, a former EU trade official now at the Global Counsel advisory group.

The transatlantic trade deal U.S. President Donald Trump is offering U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May will ultimately prove easy to promise and hard to deliver.

Still, the effort will be worth it, said Gregor Irwin, chief economist at Global Counsel. He identified the US as one of the UK’s prime targets for striking a deal. He calculated that the total value of US imports expanded faster than those of other major economies in 2010-2015 and that although the US has modest average tariff barriers with the UK, the scale of trade means current barriers are still significant.

A West Midlands-based provider of road user and cycling education courses, which works with 11 police forces across the country and has 123 staff, has secured investment from Palatine Private Equity.

Palatine was advised by Catalyst Corporate Finance, Gateley and RSM with due diligence provided by Grant Thornton, Fairgrove Partners, Global Counsel, Marsh and The Berkeley Partnership. Debt facilities were provided by Santander Corporate and Commercial Banking.

Lord Paul Myners, vice chairman at the Global Counsel, discusses his organization's survey on risk.

The UK represents the single biggest source of political risk for Britain’s largest listed companies even excluding challenges associated with Brexit, according to an analysis of the annual reports of FTSE 100 firms. 

Nearly half of the UK-based risks facing companies concerned public policies, according to advisory firm Global Counsel, which analysed the reports. Gregor Irwin, chief economist at Global Counsel, said there had been a big increase in “soft” political risks around public policy, fiscal policy and legal and ethical risks.  

The City of London is back in the dark over Brexit after this month's U.K. general election muddied the outlook for the U.K.'s departure from the European Union. Banking chiefs here have been left to wonder whether to accelerate plans to move operations into the EU.

The likelihood of the U.K. crashing out of the EU without a deal has increased, but equally so has the chance Britain could push for closer ties with the trading bloc, analysts and bankers say. "A lot is open to debate again," says Stephen Adams, a partner at consultancy Global Counsel.

As Britain looks set to leave the EU’s Single Market, business consultants have attempted to map out the numerous challenges facing the energy sector after Brexit, making the case for a transition phase.

There is a “cliff-edge” scenario under which the UK abruptly leaves the EU without any transitional arrangement, an outcome described as “unlikely” but not impossible. “In reality, both the UK and EU would see such an outcome as an historic failure and will make great efforts to avoid it,” says Matthew Duhan from Global Counsel, one of the authors of the report.

Britain should use Brexit as an opportunity to rethink some aspects of its long-term energy policy, a new report suggests.

“The most likely outcome for the UK’s energy system is continued physical linkage to the internal energy market, through a bilateral agreement on energy, either forming part of, or ‘flanking’, a wider free trade deal. But there is a long way to go to secure such agreement” said Matthew Duhan, energy lead at Global Counsel.

Some of the biggest US financial groups including Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Citigroup, are examining whether to move transactions out of London to rival hubs because of Brexit.

But reducing the funds they hold in the UK could have consequences for their presence in the country — including staffing. “From a supervisory perspective what matters is aligning the risk taking, the management and the money (both in the form of capital and revenues),” says Stephen Adams, senior director at the consultancy Global Counsel.