Rolls-Royce chief executive Warren East has written to the company’s 23,000 UK staff to tell them it is better off in the EU, warning that Brexit could result in some decisions being put on hold.
“We have taken the public position that as a company Rolls-Royce believes our customers, suppliers and employees benefit from the UK's membership of the European Union and that it is in the company's interests to remain a member,” East said in the letter.
“We're making investment decisions all the time about where to place different parts of our operation,” he said. “Uncertainty created by Brexit puts a lot of those decisions on hold and that pause is something that our US competitors don't have to cope with.”
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that not knowing whether government and EU funding would still be available in future could affect any decision Rolls-Royce made to invest in the UK over other countries.
A few days ago, the chairman of excavator manufacturer JCB, Lord Bamford, said the UK should not fear an exit from the European Union."We are the fifth or sixth largest economy in the world. We could exist on our own - peacefully and sensibly," he told the BBC.
