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Blick Rothenberg, a London-based accountancy company, said that it had registered particular interest from Germany and Austria since the June 2016 vote to leave the bloc, with more than 100 companies from the two countries requesting help to set up operations in the UK.
“No one is stopping business in the UK,” said Alexander Altmann, partner at Blick Rothenberg. “The question is how to mitigate the risks [of Brexit], and one way to do this is to set up a local subsidiary.”
However, some German companies have frozen investment plans, while others report problems in retaining German-national staff in the UK because of Brexit uncertainty.
Britain is Germany’s largest European export market and Mr Altmann said German companies saw advantages to operating as a local entity due to the UK’s business culture, employment laws and tax rates.
“Having an entity in the UK also puts businesses in a position where they could have access to [any future] preferential trade agreements,” he added.
The German-British Chamber of Industry and Commerce estimates there are 1,600 German companies operating in the UK, in industries ranging from manufacturing to retail and financial services.
But many more German groups sell to the UK without having branches or subsidiaries in the country.
Mr Altmann said that setting up a local subsidiary allowed companies to manage imports into the UK better and to act as local employers when applying for work permits to bring staff in from Germany or Austria after the UK leaves the EU.
He said easier access to banking facilities was also important, since it had become more difficult for non-UK companies to open a bank account, which was necessary for British tax authorities to assign a VAT number.
Markus Seifermann, the German co-founder of UberRaum Architects, whose clients include the German embassy in London, said access to labour and the potential increased cost of importing materials were the two issues that most concerned his European clients, and that setting up subsidiaries in the UK was one way to mitigate such risks.
He said he had not heard of a single client that wanted to stop trading in the UK as a result of Brexit. [...]
Dr Ulrich Hoppe, director-general of the German-British Chamber, said that some German companies operating in the UK had put future investment on hold because of uncertainty around Brexit, while others with plans to set up operations in the UK had not followed them through. [...]
Joachim Lang, managing director of the BDI, the main German business lobby, added that uncertainty was weighing heavily on German companies in the UK and leading to an exodus of staff. [...]
Mr Lang said he was not aware of any German companies that had moved production out of the UK because of Brexit. “But they are not taking on any new projects,” he said, “only executing current ones”.
Aline Theurer, a project manager for the Enterprise Europe Network, which advises companies on international expansion, added that some companies in the network were waiting for greater certainty before deciding whether to continue investing in the UK. [...]
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