London
(Picture: PA)City firms have reconfirmed their commitment to London, six years after the Brexit vote, defying predictions of a jobs exodus from the financial sector.
In the wake of that vote, some of the remain lobby warned that tens of thousands of City jobs could be lost to Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels and other even smaller financial centres places such as Luxembourg.
PwC predicted in April 2016, before the referendum, that as many as 100,000 financial jobs could go.
That would have been the loss of up to one in five of all City jobs, typically high paying roles that earn a lot of tax for government coffers.
Today the latest EY Brexit Tracker reports another downgrade to job relocations from the UK to Europe. It says there have been 7000 in total, down from 7600 a year ago and 10,500 in March 2017.
The number of new jobs that have been publicly linked to Brexit has risen from 5000 to 5400 as firms looked to boost their London offices.
Omar Ali, a Financial Services Leader at EY, said: “In the months following the referendum, financial firms voiced their intentions to bolster EU subsidiaries, move staff abroad and relocate headquarters in preparation for all possible scenarios.”
Ali added: “As firms gained greater clarity on what the post-Brexit landscape would look like, plans were consolidated and, in some cases, firms revised down the number of people they would need to relocate.”
The rise of Covid may well have stymied some job moves abroad.
EY also report:
1) The number of financial services firms to have moved or that plan to move operations, staff and assets from the UK to Europe as a result of Brexit has stabilised over the last 12 months.
2) Since the UK’s EU referendum, 44% (97 out of 222) of the largest UK financial services firms* have announced plans to move some UK operations and/or staff to the EU – a figure that nearly doubled between March 2017 (53 out of 222, 24%) and March 2021 (95 out of 222, 43%)
3) Since the referendum, 24 firms have publicly declared they will transfer just over £1.3trn of UK assets to the EU – a figure which has remained broadly flat over the past 18 months
4) In the last quarter, the number of Brexit-related staff relocations to the EU has been further revised down, from 7,400 in December 2021 to just over 7,000 as March 2022 closes – significantly down from the peak of 12,500 announced in 2016
When it comes to those who have located, Paris scores highest, attracting around 2,800 UK employees, followed by Frankfurt (around 1,800) and Dublin (around 1,200).
