Introduction

BDO’s Industry Watch is a quarterly measure of the health of the UK business climate, designed to provide intelligent debate for business owners, investors and other stakeholders.

Built upon a robust and comprehensive range of economic indicators, Industry Watch assigns a value between -50 and +50 to represent the health of the UK economic environment in the most recent quarter for which data is available, plus a forecast of the following two quarters.

It provides a reading for the UK economy as a whole, plus a sector-by-sector breakdown, highlighting seven key sectors of the UK economy: Public Sector, Manufacturing, Real Estate & Construction, Technology & Communications, Financial Services, Business Services, and Retail & Wholesale.

The Industry Watch scores for each sector, as well as overall, are based on a combined index of changes in several key components. The key components are lending, employment, and insolvencies, as well as business confidence. Some sectors include sector-specific components – for example, Manufacturing includes order books.

In each reading, a score of zero represents the long-term average, with a reading above or below zero signifying a more positive or negative business climate.

Each quarter, we take an in-depth look at the health of one of the seven key UK sectors analysed by Industry Watch. This quarter, our In-Focus is Retail.

Tony Nygate, Business Restructuring Partner