Brexit and Business Strategy: Analysing the Impact on UK FinTech Relocation Decisions

Our case study on Brexit and the UK fintech industry examines to what extent business managers' relocation intentions are driven by factors similar to those that drive actual relocation behaviour and compares business managers' relocation intentions with their companies' relocation outcomes. The results of this mixed-methods approach highlight a significant variation in business managers' intentions and the importance of geographical and institutional proximity for relocation intentions and outcomes. We show that business managers' relocation intentions are driven by their perception of the economic consequences of different Brexit scenarios, their territorial embeddedness, and their nationality. Our findings also indicate that although factorial surveys are only moderately accurate when predicting the exact extent and destination of actual relocation, they are highly accurate when predicting whether a company relocates.