13 February 2017

The Telegraph: Finance firms keen to keep staff in Britain post-Brexit

Britain's financiers are determined to keep as much of their operations as possible in the UK after Brexit, predicting that London will remain one of the world’s preeminent business centres.

Businesses are reviewing their position in the UK but are making only minor changes to staffing, according to EY’s financial services Brexit tracker.

 “The number of financial services companies who have publicly said that they are making wholesale changes to their London operations is relatively small given the huge number of firms that comprise the sector,” said Omar Ali, UK financial services leader at EY.

“The industry is quite rightly considering all options as they wait to see how the Brexit negotiations play out, but for the most part people’s plans are about creating optionality and ensuring they can continue to service their clients.”

He said this is because there is no suitable alternative to London.

“We have a close-knit network of industries that work well together, an attractive legal and regulatory framework and a global reputation for talent, innovation, high quality service and easy access to finance. Despite the climate of uncertainty and change, there is every reason to be confident that the UK will remain one of the world's preeminent financial services hubs.”

Rob James, an analyst at Old Mutual, said he expects banks to keep most of their operations in London, while it could be European companies that have a major re-think, working out how they can best access the financial services on offer in Britain.

“While I believe investment banks will set up subsidiaries [in other EU countries] if they don’t already have them, the gravity of London is very strong and I don’t see that being eroded any time soon. Locations such as Frankfurt simply don’t have the capacity to take on this industry,” he said.

“One solution could be to reverse the process, so that large European companies in need of investment banking services could access them via their non-EU subsidiaries. This may work, as it seems unlikely that the Europeans would want to prevent corporates from accessing such an essential service as a result of Brexit.”

Full article

EY report

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