The City is losing its battle with Brussels and Amsterdam

No sign of progress towards a workable deal with the EU for financial services, on which news is due next month. Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey warned in unusually frank terms this week that although the UK has granted ‘equivalence’ to the EU in some financial activities, ‘the EU has not so far done likewise to the UK’ and seems unwilling to do so by reference to a ‘common framework of global standards’. Instead, Brussels is seeking to apply to the UK ‘a standard that the EU holds no other country to’, amounting to ‘rule-taking pure and simple’. Given the importance of financial services to the UK economy, that’s a major defeat of the Brexit principle which seems to be passing almost unnoticed.

Meanwhile, Amsterdam last month overtook London as Europe’s largest share-trading centre with average daily trades of €9.2 billion, up from €2.6 billion in December, while London’s volume halved to €8.6 billion. Some pundits have been quick to say that the loss of this low-margin business won’t dent City profits, but here’s another indicator: Amsterdam is celebrating ‘the largest ever European tech IPO’ — of InPost, the leading e-commerce enablement platform in Poland — while London’s current best boast is to have won the listing of Fix Price, a downmarket Russian discount retailer described in one report as ‘a bet on misery’. One way or another, the City is losing the battle with Europe and it’s high time for some government-level big guns.

Hubris relaunch

A City comeback for Neil Woodford, the fallen-star investor whose £3 billion Equity Income fund collapsed in 2019 causing losses for many thousands of savers, looks as unlikely as, say, the appointment of Sir Philip Green to the Order of the Garter.