While Brexit has continued to hit the UK property market, several underlying trends are starting to paint a different picture, particularly in the central London office market where its expanding skyline is proving more resilient than expected. Research conducted by the Financial Times earlier this year, for instance, showed that London’s top 15 banks have collectively cut fewer than 3,500 jobs in the UK capital since the Referendum. The FT’s report said this is only 5% of the 15 banks’ City headcounts and that fewer than 1,500 of those moves were linked to Brexit.
Ongoing economic, technological and socio-demographic shifts have strained bricks-and-mortar retailers for some time now, but pressure was at its worst in years in 2018 and many people now question how relevant the British High Street will be in the near future.
As 2018 winds down, we are faced with the fact that Brexit and the cloudy uncertainties it poses on UK businesses and investors continues to drag on. Although it is difficult to predict what will happen given the range of outcomes and indeed the range of forecasts on the impacts of those outcomes, we at Canada Life Investments in London feel it is important to communicate a brief analysis of it as we move into 2019.
At the end of an extraordinary year of heightened demand in Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) investments across numerous asset classes, opportunities for long-term, sustainable investing in the real estate management industry are now becoming a bigger focus.
Markets took a downward turn in October as the impact of the global monetary tightening cycle, excessive valuations within some asset classes, political uncertainty and issues across emerging market currencies turned sentiment sour. However, we believe this was a sensible correction, not the first leg down in a long-term bear market.
