While commentary from LB100 leaders in recent years may have occasionally sounded like a broken record, with gingerly repeated soundbites about ‘cautious optimism’, this is certainly not true of our 2021 report.
This time last year, despite the market’s best efforts to put a brave face on things, we were still very much in the throes of coronavirus uncertainty, with no-one really knowing the true extent of the damage. ‘I’m more worried about what happens next year,’ noted Roland Turnill, Slaughter and May’s head of M&A in 2020, spelling out the quandary felt by many at the time. ‘The financial crisis was six to eight months of nothing happening, but this could be a bit more of a lull and then six months from now it gets tough. It will be a funny-shaped recovery.’
