04 December 2012

Gerry Grimstone: Global dreams must not divert the City

It really is poppycock to believe that the City can survive in its present form if it is not an integral part of the European financial and professional services single market, writes Grimstone in this FT article.

We have not yet made the case strongly enough that the UK should remain the EU’s financial centre. We know that London benefits from attracting firms that want easy access to the single market. Those firms create jobs across the UK and Europe as their operations develop. We need to protect and promote the single market, and to work hard to ensure that regulatory structures and systems continue to prize it. French and German bankers working in London have to help us carry this message back to Paris and Berlin.

Given the weight of regulation that now emanates from Brussels, British practitioners, politicians and officials need to engage more at the European level and to do so at an earlier stage – building alliances, and proactively informing and shaping the EU and its international financial and professional services policy agenda. Whether it is on banking union or on particular markets directives, we need to be at the table with an open, constructive and thoughtful approach. The UK voice needs to be firmly but constructively heard.

Embracing Europe cannot but help serve to strengthen the City’s reputation as the leading destination to do business, and to ensure it stands on an equal footing with the other major financial and professional jurisdictions around the world.

Self-interest does not always produce the most convincing of arguments. But given that the future prosperity of the City and everyone in the UK are so closely aligned, the City should not be shy of speaking out clearly at this critical time. You never know, if we win the argument and preserve our standing as Europe’s pre-eminent financial centre with all the attendant benefits and tax revenues that it brings, the people of Britain may yet again have something to thank and be proud of us for.

© Financial Times