Contributors
To kick off the debate, Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) M&A partner Stephen Wilkinson introduced guest speaker Tom White, head of Europe at Global Counsel – who has over a decade of experience working for the UK Government primarily on EU single market negotiations – to give an overview of where the UK is, both in its internal preparedness for Brexit and in its negotiations with the EU. To the surprise of some, he takes an optimistic view: ‘We could have been in a much worse position than we are now.’ However, he did point out that there were a number of major caveats to that optimism. The first being ‘we have an incredibly weak government in the UK that can actually be voted down on an issue any time and could lead to the Prime Minister having to resign and having a general election’.
