A weaker pound does serve as an incentive to invest in the UK. After all this is still a G7 nation, with fantastic infrastructure, a great market for human talent and the fifth largest economy on earth. This means investors will flock in, especially if they are in the high-tech sector. This is a sector that know no boundaries, because it relies on the borderless internet, and the UK has a history as a leader in technological development.
Recently, the high tech sector in the UK has been picking up, and London has become an attractive destination. With great access not only to human capital and expertize, but also to some of the leading global financial institutions, the UK will remain an attractive destination despite Brexit. Now Google is proving the point, after Apple also invested in more office space in the city, and after SoftBank paid 24 billion pounds for chip manufacturer ARM.
Many would say that Brexit will harm that high tech ecosystem because it will keep foreign talent away. But history and statistics may serve to prove otherwise. Britain was a tech superpower when immigration control was much tighter. It then lost much of its clout as a global leader in technological development, only to regain some of it recently. In the meantime, foreign talent flocking into the UK, has been driven primarily by the financial industry.
The assumption that Brexit will drive foreign talent away, may also be debunked soon enough. Talent is always drawn to global development centers, and governments often set their immigration policies to let that talent in while keeping low skilled workers out. But above all, no one knows how Brexit will actually be finalized, so what the markets are seeing now is pure speculation.
Brexit may very well provide more opportunities than conventional wisdom is giving it credit for, and as long as speculation follows conventional wisdom, giants like Google will swoop in and take advantage of the opportunity. The bottom line is that anyone who buys into the UK’s blooming tech industry now despite Brexit, may be buying into a great opportunity at a discount.
