[1andrew1]

Bears and honey.

Exchange chief says Brexit has made investing in the UK harder

Intercontinental’s Jeffrey Sprecher was early backer of EU split but now says London has lost value as a trading centre

Brexit has made it hard to invest in the UK, according to the head of the company behind the New York Stock Exchange — a one-time backer of the UK’s split from the EU.

Jeffrey Sprecher, founder and chief executive of Intercontinental Exchange, said the UK had lost value as a trading centre since leaving the single market, and uncertainty around some post-Brexit regulations had made it difficult to invest in British businesses.

“They still seem to be getting their arms around ‘what does a post-Brexit UK look like from a regulatory standpoint’,” he said on Tuesday. “So it’s hard to make investment decisions for us in either London or continental Europe.”

Sprecher is the latest senior international executive to say that the UK has lost its appeal to investors since voting to leave the EU in 2016. One of the world’s biggest infrastructure investors said in October that Brexit was contributing to the UK’s lack of attractive investment opportunities.

He added that Brexit had “complicated” things for the UK, which had historically been a global trading centre. “There was this international move to seeing London as an access point to Europe,” Sprecher said, adding that he now saw the UK as a “foreign country”, and that investments in the US were easier to make.

https://www.ft.com/content/f027f3ec-...4-89c4ba13879f