AXA IM's Thomas: 'Stagnation and distress' no barrier for corporates

A "post, post-industrial society" is helping businesses adapt to an environment of low growth and distressed global trade, according to Nigel Thomas, manager of the £3.2bn AXA Framlington UK Select Opportunities fund.

In his semi-annual Thomas Report, the AXA Framlington manager said such trends, combined with evidence of a US economic recovery, prompt a degree of optimism over the medium-to-long-term despite current headwinds. In his analysis of today's economic conditions, Thomas cited the words of revered Victorian banker Lord Overstone, who said in 1844 that the state of trade can be divided into "quiescence, improvement, growing confidence, prosperity, excitement, overtrading, convulsion, pressure, stagnation and distress ending again in quiescence." According to Thomas, "economists and politi...