Five years ago, the UK was waking up to news that just over half the voting population wanted the country to leave the European Union. After half a decade of political wrangling between the UK and Europe, not to mention a global pandemic, how do domestic investors view the situation?
Looking back, Schroders head of UK equities Sue Noffke (pictured) says the shock and surprise at the referendum result led to a general shunning of the domestic market in favour of international opportunities that carried far less political, currency and economic risk.
“What we had was a deeply unpopular UK equity market, we had weakness in sterling against the dollar and against the euro,” she says. “We had lagging returns from stock markets and lagging economic activity.”
Noffke thinks a lot of the poor sentiment stemmed from the political uncertainty in the aftermath of the vote. In 2017 the Conservative party lost its majority under Theresa May before the looming risk of a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour government. Optimism was revived after Boris Johnson’s overwhelming election majority…
