“We don’t know nearly enough about Brexit to even start planning, so it’s business as usual for us” - finance director, £2m turnover business
One of the headline results from AccountingWEB's first annual survey of UK finance leaders was the failure of key macro economic events such as Brexit to dent business confidence.
As shown in the chart below, the finance leaders who responded were broadly positive about the future.
In spite of the dire warnings about the economy, a potential post-Brexit trade tariff war with Europe and widespread consumer unease, 32 of the 46 respondents across a wide range of company sizes and industries stated that they believed their sales would increase, with an average prediction of 8.7% growth.
In the survey finance leaders also pointed to the prioritisation of spend control, cost reduction and gross margin improvement. This is not based on the premise that costs are likely to fall. Indeed, answering question 10 in the survey a comprehensive 91% stated that they believe their costs will increase over the next 12 months.
Before the Brexit vote a sense of economic uncertainty was all-pervasive, and led to businesses postponing investment decisions and concentrating on core work at the expense of expansion.
Since the vote, and particularly since the start of 2017, this has been replaced with a cautious optimism. After the currency fluctuations in the immediate aftermath of last year’s vote the sky has not fallen in, and particularly for those not involved in imports, exports or other multinational dealings a broadly positive attitude has emerged.
Whether this will change once the details behind Brexit begin to emerge and the full economic impact is felt will be interesting to observe. Only 7% of the businesses surveyed had actually made a full Brexit plan. Up to 37% had thought about how they will react but taken no action, while 54% admitted they had yet to consider how Brexit will affect their business.
To find out more about making business decisions around Brexit tune into our free "Making modern finance decisions around Brexit" webinar on at 11am on Thursday 4 May. You can register here.