Covid-19 Impact

2020 has been a dynamic year of change, where lives and businesses have been put in disarray and in turn has had a huge impact of FDI in the county.

2020 has been a dynamic year of change, where lives and businesses have been put in disarray. This includes the team at Invest in Gloucestershire that has previously focused on profiling the county at high profile business events around the world to attract investment.

With social distancing rules, lockdown and restrictions on international trade, most of the events were cancelled or postponed. A few that the team were planning to attend included:

• MIPIM
• Farnborough Air Show
• Hannover Messe
• JEC World
• Agritechnica
• Fieldays

Covid19 has also had a huge impact on FDI in the county and the UK:

To put the damaging impact of Covid-19 into perspective, during the recession of 2009, the average number of projects per month was around 35,000 and during Covid-19 the numbers have been ranging between just under 10,000 to just over 20,000 between March and May 2020.

M&A projects have seen a significant decrease but currently they are around in-line with the average number of projects during the recession in 2009 (peak). The impact of the pandemic is not as severe for M&A projects as it is for the Greenfield projects.

Most countries have suffered from a decline in M&A projects however, two really big deals that have still gone ahead are T-Mobiles $59bn acquisition of Sprint in the USA (April) and ThyssenKrupp Elevator’s sale to a consortium in Germany for over $18bn completed (end of February).

There will be a need to adjust to a new normal and digitisation will be a large part of this. Investment Promotion Agencies including ourselves are adjusting to the changes and to focus supporting existing investors shareholders and safeguarding jobs until the return to normality.