Business News Round Up (20/05/2024)
Scotland retains top spot for financial services investment outside of London
Scotland continues to attract the highest number of UK financial services foreign direct investment (FDI) projects outside of London, according to the latest EY Scotland Attractiveness Survey for Financial Services. Of the nine financial services projects recorded in Scotland, five were in Edinburgh, two were in Glasgow, with one each for Motherwell and Dufftown. Edinburgh is again the top UK city outside London for securing financial services FDI projects. Of the five UK financial services FDI projects, two of those were located in Glasgow. London remains the leading European city for FDI in 2023, a position retained for the last decade, attracting 81 projects, with Edinburgh also in the European top 10, at ninth place. Investor sentiment finds that 26% of financial services investors looking to establish or expand operations in the UK over the next year would look to Scotland – up from 14% in 2023 and 12% in 2022.
https://www.insider.co.uk/news/scotland-retains-top-spot-financial-32833783
UK retains top position for financial services investment in Europe
Foreign direct investment (FDI) in Europe’s financial services sector rose by 13% to 329 projects in 2023, with the UK retaining its position as the top destination. The country secured 108 projects, representing a 42% jump from 2022. France ranked second with 39 projects, reflecting a 13% decrease, while Germany was third with 38 projects, a 23% increase. According to the EY Attractiveness Survey for Financial Services, the UK’s market share of financial services FDI in Europe grew to 33% from 26% in 2022. France and Germany each accounted for 12%, while Spain sealed 5%. The number of new financial services projects across Europe reached its highest since 2019, with 233 new projects in 2023, up from 215 in 2022. The UK recorded 85 new projects, a 25% increase from 68 in 2022, raising its market share of new projects to 36%, the highest in a decade.
Brexit customs costs lower than first estimates
Britain’s exit from the EU has cost companies much less in additional red tape than was original expected. A 2019 estimate put the cost of completing customs declarations in trading with the EU at £7.5 billion a year. However, HMRC’s forecast of the number of declarations it would receive was “significantly greater than that which materialised”, according to a report from the National Audit Office. This is a result of traders and their agents changing their behaviour and has led the NAO to downwardly revise its estimate of the total cost of the additional paperwork. It had expected the number of customs declarations to leap from 55 million to 270 million. The last available data from 2022 shows HMRC received 95 million declarations – a third of the expected total – of which 39 million related to EU trade and 55 million related to trade with the ROW [rest of the world].
https://dailybusinessgroup.co.uk/2024/05/brexit-customs-costs-lower-than-first-estimates/
Demand for UK business flights has fallen by nearly a third since 2019
Demand for business travel to and from the UK has fallen by nearly a third since before the pandemic, amid an increase in homeworking and environmental backlash against the world’s biggest companies. According to analysis from the New Economics Foundation (NEF), flights for business purposes fell by 29% last year compared with 2019. NEF, which examined data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), said that 3.9m fewer trips were made over the period as big corporations cut spending on air travel. Businesses shelled out £2.9bn less on air travel in 2023 compared with 2019, a 22% decrease. The surge in homeworking and increasing use of platforms like Zoom and Teams for video conferencing has reshaped the relationship between major companies and business flying. While demand for holiday trips rebounded dramatically from Covid-era lows last year, the recovery of corporate travel has been a concern of senior airline executives.