Baker McKenzie, a BSCC Patron, has been appointed to the inaugural panel of the UK Government to provide support through WTO disputes. The leading global law firm has been chosen to join the first Post-Brexit trade panel following the deal signed with the EU at the end of last year. The UK Government Trade Law Panel (TLP) will aid the newly independent WTO Member Government which is now responsible for its ...

Read More

UK Economy & US Special Relationship The Bank of England has stated that 2020 will have been the biggest economic slump for the nation in over 300 years. The central bank even cancelled its annual stress test, with new COVID-related additions set for the future tests, of banks to allow for attention to be diverted towards credit flows in order to prop up the economy. FDI also fell by 100% during ...

Read More

UK Economy New data shows the UK economy contracted by 2.6% in November as England was placed into a second lockdown. This was the first monthly fall since April and meant that GDP was 8.5% below the pre-pandemic peak. The ONS has attributed the decline to the widespread damage experienced in services which was led by hospitality, wholesale, retail, arts and the auto sector. The economy did, however, perform far better during ...

Read More

Brexit Agreement On Christmas Eve, the United Kingdom successfully reached an agreement with the European Union on its future cooperation. The details of this agreement between Europe’s two largest economies cover a wide range of topics but offers little to the UK’s most valuable export: financial services. In the over 1,200 pages of the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) it was even noted that the phrase ‘financial services’ was mentioned ...

Read More

Dear Members, As we approach the end of 2020 we look back on what has been an extremely challenging and a very difficult year. The pandemic which we have faced all year and which continues to impact all of us has been much greater than I think any of us would have imagined at the start of the year. Many of us know people and families impacted by the virus and ...

Read More

Brexit Talks Over the weekend, PM Johnson and EC President von der Leyen said it was “responsible at this point to go the extra mile” during Brexit trade talks. Disagreements continue over the EU’s insistence to hold onto their £600m of fish, caught in British waters each year, due to President Macron wanting to gain support from French fishing communities. In the event of a no-deal: the Royal Navy have prepared ...

Read More

EU Exit Talks On Monday (7th December) it was revealed that PM Johnson would be travelling to Brussels to meet von der Leyen in person. This comes after the two leaders spoke on the phone for over an hour but were unable to come to an agreement. Britain has also offered to drop key clauses from the internal markets bill in a bid to encourage a deal to be reached. An ...

Read More

Elsa Bernadotte, co-founder of Karma One-third of all food produced is thrown away annually, resulting in 1.3 billion tonnes of waste worldwide. Karma enables rescuing unsold meals. Since it’s founding, Karma, in part spearheaded by Elsa Bernadotte, has taken on a role of educating and re-evaluating the food industry. With digital transformation, speaking to a broad spectrum of consumers, producers and enablers, Elsa solidly represents a new generation of thoughtleaders. How ...

Read More

Brexit Talks The 15th of October deadline for Brexit talks to be completed, set by PM Johnson, has been completely missed due to numerous negotiation sticking points remaining. If a trade deal is not reached then trade between the UK and EU will not cease once we enter 2021. However, the Johnson Government would come under heavy political criticism from many supporters of a hard-Brexit as the UK would have lost ...

Read More

British Advertising The UK’s popular commercialised Christmas season has already begun with a forecasted £6.2bn advertising extravaganza expected during this quarter. However, this represents a 10.5% fall in expenditure compared to last year and depicts dramatic changes in the way businesses have been looking to spend. Unsurprisingly, the cinema advertising market is expected to see a substantial 66.1% decline in advertising spending in Q4 and Out Of Home (OOH) marketing (such ...

Read More