NEOMA Alumni Mag - N°17 - Décembre 2018 - 32

MAGAZINE

Everyone has been affected,
entrepreneurs and corporations also. Tech
companies in London are very multicultural
and managers are worried that they might
have to reduce their pool of candidates.

Nathalie Janson

ANNE-LAURE LE CUNFF (PGE 14),
FOUNDER OF THE DIG ITAL
START-UP NESS LAB
Anne-Laure Le Cunff founded her company in April 2017 in London,
one year after Brexit was announced: "I had spent a year and a half
in London for my internship at Google, so my network was there,
she explains. Even with the prospect of Brexit, London remains a
very dynamic city for entrepreneurship and investments", she adds.
As the official date is drawing nearer however, she is starting to
wonder: "Announcements are constantly postponed, the last paper
published was a list of all the things that remain to be done... This
uncertainty makes it very complicated to raise funds and manage a
business. Events are organized to reassure entrepreneurs, but we
need things to be officialised", she says. At stake for her: "As a small
start-up, one interesting source of financing comes from the
European Commission, and I may not have access to them anymore.
I am also enrolled in a British university, where I benefit from tuition
for European students. If I had to pay the international students'
price, I couldn't afford it anymore." Though she is waiting for Brexit
to be final before deciding whether to stay in the UK, the prospect
of moving back home is not looking so bleak: "There are so many
things happening on the Tech scene in France, it is becoming more
attractive. A few years ago, I would have come back reluctantly,
today I would see it as an opportunity to create something in a
pro-European environment."

❱❱❱ system which can't be recreated so easily", Nath-

alie Janson justifies. If London's activities won't
decrease from one day to the next, it could progressively lose its position as substitution networks are being developed she thinks. So far, it is
unclear what system will replace the European
financial passport, but the transactions it represents are huge with more than 336,421 passports
held by 5,400 UK firms using the financial services'
passport to do business in Europe, and over 8,000

- 32 - NEOMA ALUMNI mag DÉCEMBRE 2018

Boris Kolinko
(PGE 11)

European firms doing the same in the opposite
direction according to the Financial Times. Common interests which from Nathalie Janson's perspective make a soft Brexit more likely: "The Brexit
will be soft because no one will gain from a hard
Brexit", she believes. In any case, even if the Brexit
ends up being a hard one, London has already
positioned itself ideally with regards to the foreign
currency exchange of emerging markets, the British capital having so far played a key role in the
internationalisation of the Chinese yuan thanks to
the offshore platform it created in 2012.
All the more reasons, for many working in the
finance as in other sectors, to wait and see what
will come out of the Brexit after the end of the
transition period in December 2020 prior to making any final decision: "Before moving to the United
Kingdom a year ago, I considered the risks of economic and visa constraints, but they were not
enough to stop me from coming. Financial forecasts are not disastrous, and people here are not
very worried so as long as I can stay I will", states
Amadou Loum, whose job is not affected by the
Brexit. Working for a pharmaceutical company,
Boris Kolinko (PGE 11) did not hesitate either
when transferred to London two years ago, after
the Brexit vote had already taken place: "London is
only the operational headquarters of my company,
so it hasn't been affected at all, in fact it has rather
benefited from the decline of the pound", he
shares, adding that among his London friends, few
have considered early relocations. "It is really too
soon to measure the impact of the Brexit; the overall consequences will be felt over ten years", Amadou Loum concludes. Still, when he arrived in
London, he signed up the French Consulate, just
to be safe. In these troubled times, one can never
be sure what tomorrow will bring. ❚
Pauline Bandelier

Table des matières de la publication NEOMA Alumni Mag - N°17 - Décembre 2018