Recent opinion surveys among business leaders in the southwest have cited succession planning and achieving release of capital value as key areas of concern, especially during times when sustainability of the financial performance of those businesses may fluctuate. Just under half of the respondents ranked the issue as one of significant concern, yet less than a third were well prepared to deal with it.
One indicator of how businesses in the region are responding is an analysis of the current trends in the local M&A market. As with most areas in the UK, activity in the southwest over the previous 18 months has been lower than in the corresponding period prior to that.
