Welcome back and happy new year!
We've seen an extremely busy start to 2017, it's been an eventful couple of weeks. Confidence is most certainly up, we're seeing activity from major banking clients and small start-ups equally.
As we've mentioned to many of you, MiFID II has been a focus for us as a business for a long time, given our client network which spans equally across large banks and investment houses, it's kept us busy for some time.
The projects now seem to sense the urgency as years become months and deadline day approaches.
However - we are seeing some of the busiest projects with the most to do suffer, major businesses are still looking at these programmes with a commercial perspective.
It's clear that this will be a very busy year in Change Management.
Will Contractors Benefit From BREXIT?
Although the topic is still being frantically discussed it's fair to say that the UK is faring better than expected after the Brexit vote 7 months ago, it's interesting to see that demand for contractors has also risen over the past couple of months. Depending on the results of upcoming Brexit negotiations, poor market conditions could affect this trend.
The chief executive of the Association of Independent Professionals, Chris Bryce, had the following to say on the subject:
“From a contractor point of view, the turmoil caused by Brexit could actually prove quite productive. There will be a requirement for large scale work on the implementation of Brexit both in the UK and the EU, and as we enter into negotiations and trade agreements with EU countries there will be an uptake in the amount of work required to implement those. So, in the immediate term, Brexit might actually provide quite a good opportunity.”
Looking For A New Role?
If you were put off looking for a new Interim role in 2016 then this may be a good time for you to look around. Overall contractor hiring is up, budgets are being approved and there's an awful lot of work leftover from last year.
If you'd like to have an informal conversation just to discuss the market, feel free to give us a call on 0203 762 2025. Or alternatively send an email with your CV attached to jad@arkesden.com
BAU Hiring
After a fairly up and down market last year, we're seeing a decent spike in mid-sized companies bringing in ACCA/ACA/CIMA contractors to help with busy workloads.
So far this year we've seen mandated from one of our larger Private Equity clients as well as a number of commerce & industry businesses.
As many know the lead-up to February is always a good time for these contractors, but the outlook is more optimistic than usual.