The report, Buying British - An Analysis of UK Exits (2015-2019), provides a five-year analysis of UK exits and revealed that despite an anticipated Brexit bounce, the only consistent year of deal decreases across the board, took place in 2018.

The firms said that this can be expected with the looming horizon of a “No-Deal Brexit”, such as there was then. Subsequently, across the UK, there were year-on-year increases for deals achieving £250 million - £5,000 million enterprise values (EV) in 2018-2019.

Paul Tselentis, chief executive officer of 24Haymarket, said: “The UK is rightfully recognised as a global leader in many markets, especially across the five key sectors analysed in this report. We are confident in the future of the UK as a business destination post-Brexit and post-COVID because the fundamentals are strong. Recorded M&A activity between 2018-2019 strengthens that belief and offers parallels for post-COVID opportunities.”

The trend paper has also revealed that amongst the companies detailed in the report, the majority of them (773) were purchased by other trading companies - representing 63% of the total.

Rooney Nimmo and 24haymarket found that British businesses were more likely to be acquired by other firms based in the UK. Of the sample involving British companies or companies with significant UK exposure, statistically, the acquirer was from the UK followed by the US, France, Canada and China.

It has also been revealed that 80% of companies were sold below an enterprise value of £500 million. Of the companies that make up the sample, the number of deal values which exceeded £500 million was 240, which is 20%.