London broadcasters may relocate: Brexit

Bloomberg

At a glass-wrapped industrial estate in London north of the River Thames, Brexit is giving global broadcasters a headache.
From a screen-packed, server-filled studio, Discovery Communications Inc.—home of channels including Animal Planet and Eurosport—transmits more than 120 TV feeds into Europe. Across the road, Walt Disney Co. licenses foreign language versions of
its popular kids channels beamed to the likes of Denmark, Greece and Norway.
Akin to global banks, international media companies like Discovery, Sweden’s Modern Times Group AB and Time Warner Inc.’s Turner International use UK licenses to access the European Union and must fast decide whether to relocate some operations to preserve that access. Delays to the start of substantive talks for Britain’s EU exit don’t help — the broadcasters risk having
to make the call without knowing the full impact Brexit will have on their business.
Broadcasters will have to decide on relocation by as early as next spring, said Adam Minns, executive director of the Commercial Broadcasters Association, which represents international media networks in the UK.
“No one running a business of any scale can wait to the end of negotiations before deciding what to do,” Minns said. The process of acquiring office space, moving staff and shifting technical support could all take up to a year, he said. Each of the media companies referred requests for comment to Minns.
The glacial pace of Brexit talks worsens the dilemma. The EU has said it won’t discuss issues of trade until sufficient progress has been made on the topics of citizens’ rights, the Irish border and the divorce bill. Discussions are on hold until the last week of August and the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has described a situation of inertia in everything except citizens’ rights.
Timely clarity on sector-specific issues such as broadcasting therefore looks unlikely, said Ed Hall, co-founder of Expert Media Partners, a media consultancy.
“We’re not anticipating a dramatic positive development in 2017,” Hall said. “Even if you are the biggest optimist about not having to move, you still have to make that decision in 2017 to put it into your 2018 budget.”
Discovery, host of shows like River Monsters and ‘The Crocodile Hunter on Animal Planet, is one of several media companies scouting alternative cities to use as their European hub given the uncertainty. Dublin and Amsterdam are among those looking to lure broadcasters.
Amsterdam’s international flight connections, flexible regulator and existing pool of skilled English-speaking workers are a draw. Netflix Inc. opened its European headquarters there in 2015 and announced 400 more jobs in May, while Viacom Inc.’s MTV also has a large presence in the city.
“I am holding talks with many companies, also with media companies,” said Kajsa Ollongren, Amsterdam’s deputy mayor in charge of economic affairs. “The creative industry in a broader sense is really strong, so that means that this is an interesting sector for us.”
Ireland is also vying to draw broadcasters from London. The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland has held meetings with international media companies assessing their options, said Michael O’Keeffe, the body’s chief executive.
“The inquiries got more intense after March when the formal Brexit process started,” O’Keeffe said. The similarity of Ireland’s regulatory regime to the UK’s and its well-developed audiovisual sector make it attractive to broadcasters looking to move, he said.
Thus after Brexit, a broadcaster with a hub in the UK but not elsewhere in the EU risks not being allowed to broadcast into the bloc.

UK attracts ‘top talent’
Bloomberg

As reports of disagreements over the terms of Britain’s exit from the European Union continue, the UK government said it’s having no problems recruiting “top talent” to the ministry that will negotiate post-Brexit trade deals.
The Department for International Trade has increased its workforce to over 3,200 people, it said in a statement on its website, with the trade-policy team expanding to more than 300 from 45 in June 2016, including policy and country specialists, as well as expert economic analysts and lawyers.
The department has drawn criticism for not being adequately prepared for Brexit. Andrew Adonis, a former cabinet minister from the opposition Labour Party who now heads the National Infrastructure Commission, suggested in the Guardian newspaper that the government has virtually no trade lawyers and that the top candidate for chief trade negotiator turned down the job due to a pay dispute. Crawford Falconer was the first choice and to suggest otherwise is false, the government said.
There are 20 lawyers working on trade issues and there is “significant demand for roles at all levels,” the department said, with more than 1,000 applications received in one recruitment round. Despite this, a written answer to Parliament showed last week that the department is budgeting $3.3 million to train existing staff, many of whom have little experience of negotiating trade deals.

UK firms struggle to fill posts
Bloomberg

Britain’s job market is booming, but concern is increasing about where companies are going to keep finding workers.
The number of permanent jobs grew at the fastest rate in more than two years in July, while the availability of workers fell sharply, according to
a report by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation published Tuesday. It said that helped boost a measure of starting salaries to the highest in 20 months.
The pace of hiring in recent years has pushed UK employment to a record and sent the jobless rate to the lowest since the 1970s. Kevin Green, chief executive officer of REC, which compiles the report with IHS Markit, said that while the jobs market “continues to confound expectations,” a shrinking pool of workers means that employers are “having to work even harder to fill jobs.”
He also said the results show the importance to the UK of having easy access to labour from other European Union nations after Brexit, and warned that any clampdown on immigration could have an effect. In London, caution among financial-services firms is making them hesitant, pushing recruitment in the city to its weakest in eight months, according to the report.
Open Britain, which campaigns for continued close ties with the EU, said the survey shows that Brexit is “hitting British companies,” and the government should drop its migration target.