To help you understand the implications of doing business with the UK since the recent EU Referendum, we’re offering our customers a complementary UK Country Insight Snapshot report. Read on below for the introductory text, or submit the form to download your free copy.
On the economic front, post-Brexit referendum data coverage is still poor, making it next to impossible to predict the vote's short-term fallout. Preliminary consumer confidence figures show a significant drop (albeit less pronounced than during the start of financial crisis in 2008), while retail turnover data for certain stores is still relatively sound (although down on pre-23 June values). On the FX markets, the pound has recovered some of its losses against the euro and the dollar but is still significantly down compared with pre-referendum exchange rates; we expect it to remain weak throughout 2016-17. On the stock markets, the FTSE 100 (and the FTSE 250, which includes more medium-sized British companies) also saw upward movement in the first half of July; however, bank shares in particular are still below the values recorded on 23 June. All in all, we expect the country to enter a technical recession (defined as two consecutive quarters of real GDP contraction) in H2 2016. For the year as a whole, we predict real GDP to expand by 1.3%, followed by 0.4% in 2017, as uncertainty about the UK's Brexit decision will by then have fully fed through, especially to investment activity.
For more information about our Country Insight Reports or how we can integrate country and company data visit www.dnb.co.uk/country-insight.