How competitive will London be post-Brexit?
5 Jul 16
Is London’s spot as the number one financial hub threatened and which financial centres will benefit the most from the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union?
PA gathered views from the Mayor of London and three industry figures.
London will absolutely remain Europe’s financial capital following the Leave vote, although there will be some damages to financial services. Some organisations are making decisions to move to Frankfurt, Paris and Dublin but many of them were looking for a catalyst to move anyway. Fundamentally financial services is a global industry and people who work for banks are people. At the end of the day, there’s more to life than going to work in financial services. Also, it’s easy to move from bank to bank; for example, after Lehman went bust former employees just went to work for another bank in the city.
There will be minor benefits to cities across Europe, like Frankfurt, Luxembourg, Paris, Dublin and Madrid, however, there is no major benefit of being based there.
“Some banks might move to New York, Shanghai, Singapore or Hong Kong, and we may see European cities such as Berlin join London as attractive destinations for fintech firms.”
