Brexit: UK companies are at a gloomy pace since the referendum – Deloitte | Policy

UK companies are the darkest on the Brexit since the 2016 referendum. Eight out of ten financial executives expect long-term economic conditions to deteriorate as the UK leaves the EU .

The accounting group Deloitte warned that the long-term impact of Brexit was causing growing concern, with more than half of the finance executives expecting a reduction in hiring and spending.

The latest quarterly Deloitte survey of CFOs found that only 13% were more optimistic about the future prospects of their company than three months ago.

The first-quarter survey badessed the sentiment of leading British companies following the successive rejections by Parliament of Theresa May's Brexit deal. Deloitte interviewed 89 CFOs, including 48 representing FTSE 100 companies and smaller companies on the FTSE 250.

Pessimism about the short-term effects of Brexit remains high: nearly half (49%) of CFOs expect to reduce their capital expenditures and 22% have to reduce their mergers and acquisitions activities. More than half (53%) of CFOs also plan to downsize because of Brexit – the highest level in more than two years.

"It should be noted that this was a hectic period of a few weeks and the confidence and the taste for risk have changed little among the CFOs, because many of them found themselves in a more difficult environment at the beginning of the year", said Ian Stewart, chief economist at Deloitte.

"They started the month of March when times were tough and the latest uncertainties about Brexit have not changed much. When expectations are already low, it's hard to be disappointed. "

At the same time, a separate investigation by Morgan McKinley Financial Services, a recruitment consulting firm, revealed that economic uncertainty prevails despite the small (quarter-on-quarter) increase in the number of jobs in the first quarter of 2019. In London, half the jobs and the number of service seekers since 2017 because of Brexit confusion, he said.

Hakan Enver, managing director of Morgan McKinley Financial Services, said, "We closed the year 2018 with a severely degraded labor market because it has become virtually impossible for businesses to grow here. We have less than half of the jobs and less than half of the job seekers we had at that time in 2017. "