THE EU’s powergrab of financial firms has sparked a mass exodus of bankers from the City of London due to the lack of financial service provisions in the Brexit deal.
Without any specific agreement on financial services, several banks such as Morgan Stanley, Barclays and Goldman Sachs have now moved senior bankers out of London. Instead, these firms have now looked to centres in Frankfurt, Paris and Milan. Due to the “post-Covid phenomenon”, some firms are also looking to relocate masses of workers by 2024.
Indeed, Goldman Sachs has now swelled its workforce in Milan from 20 in 2017 to 60 due to the lack of an agreement on financial services.
JPMorgan is also looking to move 200 more employees to the continent with many heading to Paris.
While Paris has attracted the most people, Frankfurt has received the most jobs leaking from London with 7,600 now reported, according to Reuters.
Due to the lack of provisions in the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, UK financial firms must now apply two sets of regulatory frameworks, also known as equivalence.
As a result, many have now relocated to Europe to avoid the extra hassle.
In order to stop the exodus of financial firms, many have called on the Prime Minister to agree a financial services deal with the EU although Brussels has stalled on doing so in order to pressure the UK over elements of the agreement.
The UK and EU agreed on a memorandum of understanding in March to continue the cooperation between financial regulators but Brussels did not grant equivalence.
The EU’s financial services chief Mairead McGuinness: “We will resume our equivalence assessments once the regulatory cooperation framework is in place and do so on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the UK’s regulatory intention.”
Source: Express.co.uk
