Views: 18 Author: Site Editor Publish Time: 2018-05-19 Origin: Site
A royal wedding gave birth to hundreds of millions of pounds
Prince Harry is the fifth consecutive heir to the British throne, Prince William's younger brother. Its fiancee Megan is an actress in the United States. The two met in London in 2016. After 16 months of falling in love, they announced their engagement in November last year. On May 19th this year, the two will hold a wedding at St. George's Church in Windsor Castle, England.
Since the news of their marriage, there has been an endless stream of speculation that the wedding will bring economic benefits to the United Kingdom.
Conservative points such as the Central News Agency report said that the British consultants estimate that the wedding will drive visits to the British tourist crowd and stimulate domestic celebrations, which is expected to add more than GBP 500 million to the British economy.
Optimistic, such as the British financial consulting firm Brand Finance predicts that the wedding will bring about 1 billion pounds (about 8.957 billion yuan) of income to the United Kingdom. Of this, 300 million pounds was driven by the British wedding industry's tourism revenue; 150 million from Megan's clothing style driven by the growth of the apparel industry. In addition, a considerable portion of income comes from the income from advertisements, parties, and peripheral products during the wedding. BusinessInsider is even more optimistic, and they estimate that this income will reach 1.4 billion pounds.
In fact, the news of the engagement between the two last year revealed that the wedding effect has become prominent.
The most obvious is tourism. The location of the marriage between Prince Harry and Megan was in Windsor Castle. Immediately after the announcement of the engagement, the price of Windsor Hotel rose to £629 per night. According to a spokesperson for the Windsor City Council, the number of tourist attractions in the town has increased by about 40%. On Airbnb, the price of a house overlooking the Royal Wedding Parade rose even to £3,000 per night.
In the collection industry, an analyst predicts that this wedding will generate an additional 60 million pounds (about 80 million US dollars) of additional souvenir sales. This estimate is not an exaggeration. A few hours after the publication of Prince Harry's engagement announcement, the online limited edition commemorative porcelain plates of the couple’s official engagement photos began to be sold online. For a few hours, the Bradford Exchange, a collectibles company, sold a limited edition commemorative porcelain plate for 2017, bringing in 120,000 pounds of revenue. Some companies expect that this wedding will bring 10%-15% of sales growth.
Of course, the US star status as a quasi-Wang Meigen will also bring income to the British economy. The jewelry and clothes worn by Megan had become the weather vane. In November 2017, Megan released a photo of the BaubleBar ring, a fast fashion jewellery brand, on social media, and the ring soon sold out.
The former House of Fraser, which was controlled by Nanjing Sangbao Group, was acquired last year after the popularity of Issa, the royal blue-wrapped dress worn by Kate's engagement. One can imagine that the personal brand worn by Megan after the wedding will also attract more people's attention on wedding derivative products, companies and investment institutions.
The British economy under the prince's wedding ceremony
Time back 30 years ago, when Charles and Diana were married, the British economy faced serious difficulties. The then Prime Minister, Mrs. Thatcher took advantage of the wedding of the century to broadcast this wedding to more than 700 million spectators across the country. Using the "advertising effect" of the wedding, Mrs Thatcher successfully spent three years freeing Britain from economic problems. The data show that at that time, the wedding had brought 1.43 million foreign tourists to the UK and contributed about 375 million pounds in consumption.
Seven years ago, the wedding of Prince William and Princess Kate also effectively boosted the British economy. According to the statistics of the National Bureau of Statistics of the United Kingdom, in 2011, Prince William’s wedding month increased the number of British tourists by 350,000, and brought nearly 1 billion US dollars in revenue to the British economy. At that time, Britain’s deficit was as high as 155 billion pounds, and the unemployment rate was more than 7%. Prime Minister Cameron even announced the most severe fiscal cuts in the history of Britain.
According to the British business assessment consulting firm Brand Finance, annual tourism spending associated with the British royal family provides about 550 million pounds of economic growth. Many tourists line up in front of Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, and other current and former royal residences. According to the person in charge of management, a total of 4.4 million people visited the historic royal palaces throughout the UK in 2016. Obviously, relying on the "advertising effect" of the prince's wedding to boost the British economy has become a "usual trick" for Britain when it encounters economic crisis.
Since the British referendum on the Brexit, the UK economy has continued to decline. In the first quarter of 2017, GDP recorded the worst performance in the recent 2016. By 2017, the employment growth rate in the UK has already fallen by about half. Earlier, the UK Office of Budgetary Responsibility lowered its forecast for GDP growth in the United Kingdom. It is expected that the growth rate of real GDP in the UK will slow down from 1.8% in the previous year to 1.6% in 2017 and only 1.3% in 2018. Indicates that the UK economy is weak.
However, the economic benefits of Prince Harry's wedding may be limited. Tom Jenkins, chief executive of the European Tourism Association’s ETOA, pointed out: “Don't expect foreign tourists to watch the royal wedding from afar. This is a grand event for domestic consumption.”
Joshua Bamford, head of Centre for Retail Research, a British company’s retail research company, also stated that Prince Harry is not the first heir to the throne like his brother William, and that everyone’s attention to him may not be that great. Prior to the "USA Today" also said that many British people's response to the wedding. The Conservative government led by Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May also announced that the bank would not be on holiday during the wedding.
Britain will lose 50 billion pounds? Domestic VC/PE Escape, Chinese Invasion
On the one hand, the British Teresa May government is busy negotiating with the EU on Brexit affairs. On the other side, more and more British people immigrate to other countries in the European Union.
Brain drain, difficulty in recruiting overseas talents, and severe damage to technology companies... With the slow progress of the Brexit process in the UK, the negative impact of Brexit on the UK venture capital market continues. From 17 years onwards, there were news Reported that some British VCs began to flee.
In January 2018, the report “Preparation for Brexit for the United Kingdom” issued by the Cambridge Econometric Society of the United Kingdom predicted that if Britain and EU countries do not reach a trade agreement, the UK will lose nearly 50 billion pounds of investment by 2030, and 500,000 jobs.
Paul Venables, chief financial officer of Hays, the largest UK-based headhunter, said that before the upcoming British Brexit, because of the great uncertainty brought about by Brexit, investment institutions around the world are more likely to postpone investment in the UK. British companies continue to lag behind their European counterparts. The data shows that in 2017, investment projects in continental Europe increased by 17% year-on-year, while investment projects in UK companies were roughly flat year-on-year.
Affected by these factors, the attractiveness of the company's entrepreneurial environment in London is also declining. Many companies in the UK are actively considering the transfer of employees and investments out of the UK. PPRO Group is said to be the fastest growing financial technology company in Europe. Simon Black, the company’s chief executive, said that his company has just started operations in Luxembourg because they are not sure whether companies based in the UK can still trade in other EU countries under the current “passport” regulations.
Patrick Alnesen, CEO of the Swedish company Football Addicts, said after the Brexit bounced that it had abandoned plans to establish another office in London. He originally planned to recruit 30 people through this office in the next 2 years.
Simon Black, chief executive of PPRO Group, a UK online payment company, said he is considering relocating his company’s legal headquarters to Dublin, Luxembourg, or other regions. He wondered if the UK’s financial regulation regulations would still be conducive to start-up companies connecting to Europe. Such uncertainty will lead FinTech startups to leave London.
In contrast to the large number of uncertainties in the UK domestic market, it is the attitude of Chinese capital. In particular, the desire of British companies to seek foreign investment and trade after Brexit has become stronger, and Chinese companies have also increased their investment in the UK. In the half-year period after Britain’s co-investment decided to leave the European Union, more than 40 major transactions were concluded, involving areas such as real estate, new energy, sports, finance, and infrastructure.
China's investment in the UK is dominated by mergers and acquisitions, supplemented by investment. According to the statistics from Morning Post, in 2016, China invested a total of 93 transactions in the UK, and 65 transactions with a total amount of disclosure amounted to nearly US$75 billion. Real estate and sports are Chinese investment hotspots. Among them, the ones most concerned by the media are Li Jiacheng and Wang Jianlin’s “buying, buying and buying”.
According to the “2017 British Commercial Real Estate Analysis Report”, for the entire year of 2017, British commercial real estate had a total investment of 62.1 billion pounds, a substantial increase of 27% from 2016. Among them, Chinese capital, including Hong Kong, jumped to the top of the largest overseas investment in English commercial real estate in 2017, totaling 8.246 billion pounds (about 72 billion yuan), an increase of 174% year-on-year.
In 2018, the enthusiasm of Chinese investment in the UK remains high. On February 8th, Poly Real Estate officially acquired the land of the Millbrook Park large-scale residential complex development project in Mill Hill, North London, through the Group's Poly UK formally from The Inglis Consortium LLP. £74.65 million.
Although Brexit has some influence on the status of London's international financial center, in reality, other European financial centers such as Frankfurt, Paris and Dublin have their weaknesses, or their body size is too small, or they have legal environment, labor system, language, etc. It is difficult to truly replace London’s role as a regional and global financial center. The German Finance Minister Schäuble has previously stated that the City of London serves the entire European economy. Currently, no city in the European continent can provide similar level of financial services.
