It’s that time of year, when Business Link Magazine invites the region’s business leaders to offer up their predictions for the year ahead.
It has become something of a tradition, given that we’ve been doing this now for over 30 years.
Here we speak to Adam Gilbert of AG Corporate Law.
Clients that we speak to continue to report increased cost pressures and supply chain issues regardless of sector. They do however remain quietly optimistic.
Whilst inflation has eased from the highs we saw in the early part of last year, suppliers continue to try and pass on higher costs which ultimately results in either reduced profits or those costs being passed to the end customer. With the current issues regarding shipping in the Red Sea, my clients that rely on products and/or raw materials from the Far East look set to continue to experience those challenges throughout 2024.
Despite the above and the habit of many commentators to focus on the “doom and gloom,” with a tendency to almost talk the market and economy into a self-fulfilling prophecy, M&A activity remains strong in the East Midlands and more widely. Much of the negativity in 2023 about the state of the economy did not play out.
Retirement sales dominate our workload at AG Corporate Law, and we continue to see management teams stepping up and agreeing deals to take businesses forward. I don’t see this changing in 2024. The needs of a seller to “get out” present opportunities for those management teams or competitors and which tend to outweigh other factors or timing issues.
I continue to see price expectations (on both buy and sell sides) cooling and resetting to more sensible levels but ultimately good businesses will always sell regardless of the market.
