First Brexit employment casualties

[Stopyourhavering]

dd graduated this week, happy times.....phoned this morning to say that 2 of her friends, who had also graduated ( business/law degrees) and been offered jobs had been telephoned by their prospective employers to say that because of Brxit, they were now basing their headquarters in Berlin rather than UK and would no longer be employing them......I fear this is just the start....I am so angry and upset for our youth. My ds and dd2 are so angry and feel betrayed....I wish 16 &17 year olds had been given a vote as I feel they had a better handle on the repercussions of Brexit

Back in the real world Foxtons issued a profits warning a couple of days ago citing damage in consumer confidence due to the vote, although to be fair it was also argued that it was due to online agents undercutting fees. (Plus Foxtons are total cowboys ime).

My BIL, who owns 5 franchises of one of the top 4 high end estate agents (ie not Foxtons), reports a total freeze. There had been a dash at the beginning of the year for sellers getting transactions through before the rise in stamp duty on second homes.

Meanwhile, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors reported Brexit fears had caused the biggest fall in inquiries from buyers since the financial crisis.

Did you read your links?

A bloke from Chestertons, a bloke from Harrods Estates and a bloke from John Taylor got some calls...

Of course there will be foreign investors looking for a bargain while the pound's weak, but that cannot possibly make up the bulk of property turnover.

I read those links while looking for your source, Larry.

The Independent article is froth.
The comments under the Standard article are the most interesting part of it.

Certainly no actual information in either one.

Math,

Way too early for meaningful information. All the 'info' so far has been opinions including the credit rating downgrade. From the same agencies who had Aig at AAA a few months before they were bailed out.

All of those comments do make a good point. How the hell is more housing being sold to foreign investors (and probably being left empty) going to help the people of London. Isn't just going to keep prices artificially high and reduce available housing stock?

So what exactly was your comment in aid of, Larry?

Headdreamer - I presume that those contractors didn't have "real" jobs, so that therefore "real" people haven't lost their jobs and you're making it up

Way too early for meaningful information

Well quite.

prettybird I guess I must have imagined people sitting at the desks i felt really down today because of it.

Even worse is we didn't get anything official. I heard it first in a meeting where some one high up made a passing comment about terminating all contract staff. And of course the empty desks. I think this really adds to the sense of uncertainty.

I work for a medium sized business and not trading with Europe. But our customers are big names and some are really hit on the shares market (banks and construction). I didn't expect it would be within a week. I'm in shock.

I'm so sorry headDreamer - it's really not fair that we're just pawns of other people's power games circumstances

It was all so foreseeable

But I'm sure Larrygrylls et al will claim that either it's the Remain Camp's fault by overreacting/not having made contingency plans and/or it's not actually happening.

Another Schrödinger's Effect (like Schrödinger's Immigrant). What should this one be called: "Schrödinger's Brexit Result"?

The contractors at my work have been let go too.

They also sacked one of the admin girls although admittedly that was performance related, but they have no plans to replace her as there's a recruitment freeze which means more work for the rest of the team for no extra money.

As I said up thread, the whole company is now on 4 days (small business in the construction industry which provides a non-essential service).

We had a massive project with a magic circle law firm put on hold as a result of Brexit.

Contract staff are often the first to go - but companies employ contractors to give them flexibility in the workforce.

larry commercial property press have been saying for a while that high end properties in the West End would continue to turn over as a result of the weak pound, and the market round the rest of London will slow down. More interesting to see how investors have moved away UK property funds and equities over recent weeks.

On the subject of property, I've just seen that a major Singapore bank will no longer issue loans for UK properties, on the basis of high sovereign and forex risks.

which is a sure sign that the london property market will take a hit.

Twinklestar2

Don't worry - as with all divorces, if there's any industry that will make money out of this, it will be a magic circle law firm...

Well indeed. The Brexit voters basically chose to reward rich lawyers, give speculators a chance to make money on rises and falls on shares and ensure their own living standards are worse. They knew all this in advance of course and plenty of them aren't after money or more money - it was a matter of principle for them.

which is a sure sign that the london property market will take a hit.

Which is what this site has been after for a long time, if you look into it, it is actually commercial property and they use there own banks so of no benefit to the UK, commercial property is most often leased or left empty so I'm failing to see why this is a bad thing.

The huge 180 of some posters after the result, especially of the potential cooling of the housing market is astounding.

Its almost like a few posters where only paying lip service to the fact that something had to happen to correct the market...

I'm pretty sure it isn't just commercial property. Why do you think that? They are the third largest lender in Singapore.

Most posters won't have a vested interested in the London property market per se but will be more concerned about the economy in general. A "correction" at the current time cannot in any way be seen as a good thing.

Pension funds are often invested in commercial property - if the commercial property market takes a hit, then so do pension schemes.

DH is very much on the grapevine amongst European scientists, and has heard a number of instances of British scientists being asked, regretfully, to leave collaborative grant applications. The success rate for science grant funding can be as low as 5% (and the lead time is very long), so even though we won't Brexit for at least 2 years, the effects are already being felt now. I'm trying to get DH to document these so we have evidence for the deniers.

HSBC rules out leaving ...

www.ft.com/fastft/2016/06/30/hsbc-rules-out-leaving-london-after-brexit-vote/

AFAIK "headquarters" just = a pretty brass plaque in a prestigious location. They have not confirmed that they will not be moving staff/operations elsewhere...

First hand experience here - was midway through a senior level recruitment process which has been ditched following Friday's news. Big US city-based financial services firm, now considering other places to site their corporate teams.

HSBC has been saying for months that HQ would stay in London, but 1000 investment banking jobs would relocate to Paris:

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-15/hsbc-ready-to-move-1-000-bankers-to-paris-on-brexit-ceo-says

www.theguardian.com/business/2016/feb/15/uk-better-in-reformed-europe-says-hsbc-chair