The latest salvos have been fired in the EU’s battle to drain the City of London’s financial business. Brussels – with France at the helm – has long cherished imposing a continental blockade on Britain’s financial access to the EU. But, like Napoleon’s 1806 embargo on British trade to the continent, things are not that simple.
The Cassandras have had to eat their words following their predictions that there would be tens of thousands of Brexit-induced job losses in the City after 2016. The Financial Times’s own survey shows that rather than delivering a big hit to financial services, nine of the world’s largest asset managers have ramped up their headcount in the capital by 35 per cent over the past five years, and most international banks have also increased staff, including French BNP Paribas. Of course, asset managers have set up EU funds to be able to sell to European investors post Brexit, but the numbers are limited.
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