LONDON, Jan 17 — UK business leaders, resigned to a Brexit that many of them opposed, welcomed Prime Minister Theresa May’s pledge to ease the transition to a future outside the European Union while expressing frustration that her speech today failed to answer questions about the nuts and bolts of leaving.

May said she’s prepared to sacrifice membership in the single market in return for the ability to curb immigration and assert Britain’s sovereignty. She said she’d pursue a free-trade agreement with the EU, smooth the exit for UK companies by applying current European rules until new laws are approved and submit the Brexit deal for parliamentary approval.

With only weeks to go before May has said she’ll invoke the EU’s Article 50, formally setting the UK on the road to Brexit, executives have been grasping for details on Britain’s future trading relationships. Concerns have included the fall in the pound, access to the migrant labour on which many British companies depend and the future state of regulation. The British currency rebounded but May’s speech left some executives short of answers.

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“While businesses now have a clearer sense of the prime minister’s top-line priorities, they will come away from her speech knowing little more about the likely outcome of the Brexit negotiations than they did yesterday,” Adam Marshall, director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said in a statement.

Clean break

May said she favours a clean break with the EU, rather than a “half-in, half-out” arrangement under which the UK could remain in the single market without having a say in making its rules. While pledging to reduce immigration, May stopped short of guaranteeing the rights of European workers in the UK without reciprocal agreements from EU governments. Many British companies say a shortage of skilled workers could grow more acute if they can’t hire from elsewhere in the EU.

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Some pro-Brexit business leaders said the details were less important than May’s outline of her negotiating priorities, after months in which critics have accused the prime minister of a lack of decisiveness.

“What investors and entrepreneurs want most of all is certainty and Theresa May is setting out some clarity and that is good,” said Luke Johnson, co-founder of private-equity firm Risk Capital Partners LP, who supported leaving the EU.

Before May’s speech, a major concern among UK companies was what would happen on the day after leaving the EU, with the Confederation of British Industry warning of a “cliff edge.” The prime minister said she would pursue a “phased process of implementation, in which both Britain and the EU member states prepare for the new arrangements between us.”

‘Smooth, orderly’

“Whatever the shape of the final trade deal, a smooth and orderly departure is in the whole country’s interests, so businesses will support the commitment to a phased process of implementation,” Allie Renison, head of Europe and trade policy at the Institute of Directors, a business group, said in a statement.

While May said she’d seek a free-trade deal with the EU, she did not guarantee that UK companies would maintain their current level of access to European markets after it leaves the group. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said Britain’s resurgent car industry needed tariff-free trading, rather than relying on the World Trade Organisation rules that would apply if no deal were struck.

“Achieving this will not be easy and we must, at all costs, avoid a cliff-edge and reversion to WTO tariffs, which would threaten the viability of the industry,” Mike Hawes, chief executive officer of the group, said in a statement.  — Bloomberg