Heads of top firms in U.K. warn that Brexit will significantly slow the country’s economic growth.
It will reach a growth rate more sluggish than any other G7 advanced country within the year.
Experts Send Warning
Senior execs from over 100 different banks, private equity firms, asset managers, and insurance companies have all shown concern. They warn that the United Kingdom’s economic growth will fall behind that of other advanced G7 nations. This will occur before the close of 2018, warn the heads of the largest financial firms in the world.
Nearly three out of every four among the hundred senior executives said the British economic growth rate is cause for worry. They stated that no other advanced economy will have a growth rate as slow as the U.K. by the end of this year.
This outlook is considerably more dire than it had been at the same time last year. In 2017, only Less than one quarter of the executives held that forecast.
2017 Levels or Worse
About half of the executives stated that they felt the United Kingdom’s economic growth would maintain the levels achieved in 2017. Another 29 percent said the growth rate would fall. Only about a fifth of the financial execs believed the British economy’s growth rate would improve.
Of all the risks cited by the executives, Brexit topped the list as the one factor causing the most harm to the country’s economic potential. About 55 percent said Brexit worried them. Another 28 percent called it the biggest risk their companies would face in 2018. Twenty four percent said their optimism about Brexit had fallen over the last year.
Has it Already Started?
In Q4 2017, the U.K.’s GDP growth fell by 0.4 percent. That still meant an increase of 1.7 percent for 2017 as a whole. However, it also already placed the U.K. at the bottom of the G7 countries in terms of its economic growth rate.
Lloyds Bank head of financial institutions, Robina Barker-Bennett, said that the U.K. economy’s top predictor is in its financial services sector.
“about Brexit are looming large as the final countdown begins to March 2019, but our survey suggests that the UK economy will prove to be resilient and that it will come through the challenges of the next few months relatively unscathed,” said Barker-Bennett.