London — UK businesses have delayed or cancelled investments worth £65.5bn since the vote to leave the EU, with more than 40% of large companies scaling back, according to a new survey. Executives have been reluctant to follow through on spending plans because of a plunge in the pound and a lack of clarity over the UK’s future relationship with the EU, according to the study published on Monday by the Centre for Economics and Business Research and Hitachi Capital UK. "Everyone talks about uncertainty, but what does that mean?" Hitachi Capital UK CEO Robert Gordon said. "Once you start putting a number to it, it becomes quite scary." Nervousness among executives is in part due to uncertainty about what a new deal with the EU would look like. Pro-EU group Open Britain said the UK could face a billion-pound hit from losing access to the bloc’s free-trade agreements with more than 50 countries across the world.
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