Brexit could leave 200,000 financial sector jobs at risk, experts warn

Stark warning: Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond opens the London Stock Exchange with Xavier Rolet
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Fiona Simpson10 January 2017

The UK's financial sector could lose more than 200,000 jobs after Brexit, experts have warned.

Xavier Rolet, chief executive of the London Stock Exchange Group (LSE), said two thirds of the job losses would be felt outside Greater London, with the blow coming as soon as Article 50 is triggered.

Speaking to MPs on the Treasury Select Committee, Mr Rolet said the figure came from a report produced by professional services firm EY for the LSE.

The investigation not only took into account the "few thousand" jobs lost from euro clearing itself, but the entire impact on financial services if the operation was moved outside the UK, he said.

"It’s not the level revenue or the number of jobs created by the underlying activity that counts.”

He said the report found that "as far as the entire United Kingdom is concerned, 232,000 jobs would be at risk or likely to be lost".

Mr Rolet warned that the EU was already singling out the UK to disrupt its euro-clearing operation in a way that does not effect other countries, such as the United States or Japan.

Mr Rolet's comments came as Douglas Flint, group chairman of HSBC, said the bank may take "pre-emptive action" to move jobs to France, the Netherlands or Ireland before the Article 50 process is complete, but would wait longer before "pushing the button" on the move.

"If you have already established an operation in the EU you can take your time to decide whether or not to move quickly more leisurely, seeing how the negotiations flow," Mr Flint said.

"But a bank like us with operations all over the EU including a significant full-service bank in France, you can take even longer to decide when to push the button.

"Nobody wants to push the button because the best outcome for everybody is the preservation of the status quo insofar as is possible."

Banks have issued stark warnings since the Brexit vote, claiming thousands of jobs would shift to rival financial centres across Europe and the United States if Britain loses the right to sell financial services to the EU.

US banking giant JP Morgan said 4,000 jobs would leave the UK, Goldman Sachs threatened to move 2,000 roles if Britain loses passporting rights and HSBC claimed it would transfer 1,000 positions from London to Paris following the Brexit vote.

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