Nearly half of British companies are financially vulnerable and unprepared for the future, according to the chief executive of the world’s second most valuable company.
Microsoft’s Satya Nadella told the Telegraph that the UK needs to focus on areas where it has key competitive advantages — including healthcare and financial services — to build an economy that will thrive after Brexit.
Figures compiled by the US tech firm, together with Goldsmiths, University of London, suggested that half of all UK companies are struggling to remain competitive and appeared at risk.
These are companies where revenue was slumping and managers were taking “too long to integrate new technology”, Microsoft said. Just over 20pc of British businesses had been forced to scrap their existing business model days after Britain entered a lockdown this year.
Microsoft said it was “ringing the alarm bell” amid concerns that the failure of these businesses to compete “posed a threat to Britain’s prosperity”.
Mr Nadella said the UK should be capitalising on the areas that it was already strong in to drive productivity growth.
“The UK has a big structural advantage with the NHS,” he told the Telegraph. “There aren’t that many systems in the world which have this amount of healthcare data and real-world evidence data that can change everything that’s happening in the pharma industry all the way down to care.”
He said financial services was another area where the UK had a unique advantage, and could compete in an "increasingly digital world".
Microsoft: the “boring” $1.5tn success
His comments come as the research suggested the UK could benefit from a £48bn boost to its economy, if every business leader took basic and low-investment steps, such as starting to put in place technology across their businesses and making their workforce more diverse.
Mr Nadella said at Microsoft, he was “trying to make sure I’ve not become too dogmatic too early on what changes are going to be structural and persistent after Covid-19, and what’s more temporary”.
“It’s hard to imagine in the US and UK where the second wave is upon us, but one day will come when this pandemic will be behind us."
Last week, Microsoft announced that it would be giving staff the option to work from home permanently, despite Mr Nadella previously saying working remotely “sometimes feels like you are sleeping at work", with little divide between work and private lives.
In an announcement today, the company said it was kicking off a new campaign to help 1.5 million people in the UK into the technology sector. Under this campaign, which today received the backing of the Department for Work and Pensions, Microsoft said it would be expanding its apprenticeship program and running career switcher programmes.
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