ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now time to take a look through the top stories in today’s business pages of the Sunday papers.  I’m joined by Ronan Dunne, the Chief Executive of O2 and Farzana Baduel who is Managing Director of Curzon PR and supports the Vote Leave campaign.  Let’s begin and I’m sure that issue will raise its head straight away Ronan because you’ve got the effects I suppose of the decisions being put on hold because of the very prospect of the referendum itself.  

RONAN DUNNE: So this morning’s Telegraph leads with the fact that the economy is already slowing down as anxiety re Brexit grows.  I think the challenge for business people while the economy is not the only factor in this debate, I think it is one that does affect everybody.

DM: What are some of the specific aspects of that, what is happening?

RONAN DUNNE: So investment decisions are being deferred, we’ve seen a complete crash in commitments to property in central London, office property, down by 65% so what we’re already seeing is people are waiting to make investment decisions and for example, the financial services industry relies on passporting which allows you to have a location inside the European Union and passport that right, right across the EU.  If the UK is not inside there are a lot of financial institutions which may have to move their headquarters to another location so they can passport their services.   

DM: You are part of a bigger group, Ronan, tell me is it affecting investment decisions within Telefonica?  

RONAN DUNNE: At the moment our investment decisions within the UK are being put on hold largely because we’re waiting for the clearance of our proposed transaction with Hutchison which is currently at the regulators in Europe but I think the key, Dermot, is in an election normally you have both sides lay out their policies and whoever wins you know what will happen the day after.  The challenge that we have is we don’t know what will happen the day after a vote to leave and we may not know for years to come and that is a long term uncertainty.  

DM: I want to bring in another story, Obama and Clinton who may succeed him, Hillary Clinton tells Britain you should stay in the EU, so the heavyweights are weighing in and one presumes they are not making it up, they genuinely believe it.  

RONAN DUNNE: I think there is an interesting debate about how much he should be saying in private versus public, however if you wanted to negotiate a trade deal with somebody the day after the 23rd June you might go and ask them the basis on which you would do that and what he has volunteered and said is you won’t be at the front of the queue and it might take ten years and not ten months.  So from a facts point of view it is entirely appropriate that you should ask the person that you want to negotiate with, what is the basis of those negotiations.  

DM: Moving on to the next story.

RONAN DUNNE: Sliding sales and this is talking about the fact that the high street is challenged, where have all the shoppers gone?  I think one thing in the context whether it be Brexit or more broadly is, we need to put in place the basis for a sustainable economy and one of the things we have to do is make sure we are a more digital oriented economy and really benefit from the opportunity of having good digital infrastructure.  The UK has the highest proportion of its economy online of any G20 country but we are seeing our high streets decay so we have been doing some research recently and working with St Helen’s council and we have also been participating in the Digital High Street Review Board and we’ve come up with some analysis that says actually by using some of the tools already available, some of the strong digital skills that are available in young people in the local St Helens community, that we could grow their local economy by 50 million by  2020.  

DM: But the high streets still fade away though don’t they and if people start doing it online the high streets will …

RONAN DUNNE: What will happen is the nature of the high street will change.  I’ll give you a great example, in my industry 83% of our customers will go online to review products and services and then go into a retail store and complete that purchase, only 17% do the whole journey online so there is a way of regenerating the high street and actually building small local economies with access to great online …

DM: One more story, Britain’s billionaire women.  

RONAN DUNNE: We have a start-up incubator in the UK and 50% of the current cohort are women founders and entrepreneurs so lots of evidence that in the new economy women are taking their fair share.  

DM: More of it and more of you I hope in the paper review, thank you both very much indeed.