The global chief executive of recruitment giant Adecco says the firm remains committed to the UK no matter the outcome of June’s referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union (EU).

Speaking at an event organised by Adecco Group UK & Ireland and independent think tank the Social Market Foundation, Alain DeHaze told an audience in London last night Adecco will continue to invest and develop activities in the UK, adding the UK is very important to Adecco as its third largest market.

However, DeHaze said Brexit would affect recruitment agencies’ ability to access talent across the continent, while global companies see the UK as the “gateway to Europe”. 

“The UK is not only a big market worldwide but for a lot of global companies coming from the US and Asia and so on, UK is the gateway to Europe and so a lot of logistics centres, headquarters are today based in the UK. We see potentially a deviation disinvestment towards other countries in Europe.”

And DeHaze also raised concerns about a possible period of uncertainty following Brexit, as the UK seeks to negotiate trade deals.

“Look at the current negotiation between Canada and Europe regarding the trade agreement [Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA)]. This negotiation is already lasting eight years, so you can imagine after a Brexit how long [this could] last, especially as the UK will not have the strongest voice in the table of negotiation. The UK should have to start to negotiate with a lot of partners.”

But Jamie Martin, adviser and representative of the Vote Leave Campaign, told the audience the fact that it takes so long to negotiate deals with the EU supports the case from Brexit.

“We’ve heard it’s taken eight years and counting to do a deal with Canada. This is my problem.

“In 30 years we will have far more free trade agreements with countries in Asia, Africa and the Americas if we leave than we will if we stay. And because our interests are increasingly becoming so different to theirs [EU] – because we want to be flexible and open and they want to be narrow and closed – we will also have trade agreements, which are far more in our interests.”

But Sir Vince Cable, the former Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, rejected the idea that free trade agreements would be easier to negotiate upon Brexit.

“Let’s look at the detail,” he said. “I’ve spent several years with my colleagues trying to get an agreement with India and the reason we couldn’t get a trade agreement with India was not because of European bureaucrats or the French, it was because the British objected to the terms of the agreement.

“The Indians weren’t giving enough on financial services and they were insisting on something called Mode 4, which has to do with the immigration of software engineers, so we blocked it – nobody else did.”

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