What is likely to be the combined impact of two major events - Trump’s election and Rachel Reeves’ Budget - on investment, trade and dealmaking? Inside got the views of a group of leading dealmakers to guage what’s set to happen next, and what needs to happen.
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00:00I'm Kurt Jacobs, the editor of Midlands Business Insider, and I just held a fascinating discussion
00:16with a group of dealmakers looking at the impact of two seismic events that have taken
00:21place in recent days. The first is the election of Donald Trump, and the other is the Rachel
00:26Rees budget. And over a discussion, we've looked at how these events are going to impact
00:32dealmaking, international trade, the economy, investment. Let's see what they have to say.
00:38Yeah, Mark Wilson, Headpoint Advisors, founder and managing partner. I think that the positive
00:45that we've got is a pro-growth sort of sentiment. Whether or not that comes through or not,
00:50we'll see. I think the election in the US has been really positive from a pro-growth
00:56perspective, and we should see that coming through. More deals, more cross-border deals
01:01for M&A in this country.
01:05Kevin Johns, Director of Prime Accounts Group. The negative, clearly, for businesses has
01:09been the 2%-ish increase in national insurance, but it can be a positive as well. Business
01:15owners will take that opportunity to find ways of being more productive and finding
01:19ways of reducing that cost. So if they can innovate and make those cost savings, it's
01:23an opportunity to increase that productivity, which the UK is struggling with.
01:27I'm Graham Spaulding. I'm a corporate partner at Lodd & Solicitors. I think the positives
01:32were we all heard the sentiment about pro-growth. I think we need to see how that's going to
01:37come through, and we're looking to the government for initiatives that will help the UK industry
01:42grow. We think that capital gains tax changes were not as stark as people were worried about,
01:51and therefore we hope that the M&A community will carry on and trade well.
01:56So I'm Graham Mould from FDC, Head of Growth. And in terms of positives and negatives, we've
02:04got to somehow get back the enthusiasm of business, which has been lost over the last
02:09few weeks because it's not been good. I've no doubt it will come back because entrepreneurs
02:16are great in this country and they will work their way around this stuff. So I think that's
02:20a real positive. In terms of the negative, some people would say Trump. I would say that's
02:26an opportunity. So we've got to go after a trade deal.