Leading private equity professionals and management teams hope to remain in the EU

With the referendum fast approaching, we recently asked a group of prominent chairmen, CEOs and private equity professionals* to give us their views on Brexit.

Our results echoed several wider research findings from the asset class, with a strong majority (76%) opposed to Brexit, significantly higher than in wider UK public polls which indicate a much more evenly split electorate. Accounting firm RSM recently found that two thirds of UK private equity professionals will vote to remain in the EU, meanwhile research commissioned by the BVCA and Ipsos MORI revealed that 83% of business leaders of British private equity portfolio companies believe that remaining in the EU would be best for their business. 

In addition, Augentius recently reported that 73% of UK private equity and property firms in the UK support remaining, and nearly 70% of all respondents across Europe, Asia and the US consider the outcome either ‘very important’ or ‘important’ for their business.

Steve Tappin, BBC CEO Guru, outlines what he thinks are some of the key reasons for this in his latest post, including a risk of slowing down the economy, and a natural aversion to uncertainty. The full post can be found here.

Meanwhile, the current uncertainty around Brexit is already impacting business decisions, with this being given as a key reason for the slow start to UK buyouts in 2016 according to a CMBOR and Equistone report. For those private equity houses seeking to make exits, the referendum poses a very real timing dilemma - to sell or not to sell? Bloomberg reports. Some exits may well have been shelved for now, but in reality there is not much longer now to wait!

Whilst the majority of all three groups in our survey were heavily pro-Europe, in the breakdown the most pro-Brexit group was the Chairmen, although even 71% of those polled were still firmly in favour of remaining in.

Thankfully the debate does not have much longer to run and we will hopefully all be able to get back to business as usual (or unusual?!!).

*Sample size 88 at time of going to press: 56 Chairmen, 18 CEOs and 14 PE professionals