Brexit: leading banks set to pull out of UK early next year

LONDON. KAZINFORM - Britain's biggest banks are preparing to relocate out of the UK in the first few months of 2017 amid growing fears over the impending Brexit negotiations, while smaller banks are making plans to get out before Christmas, The Guardian reports.

The dramatic claim is made in the Observer by the chief executive of the British Bankers' Association, Anthony Browne, who warns "the public and political debate at the moment is taking us in the wrong direction".

A source close to the Brexit secretary, David Davis, said he and the chancellor,Philip Hammond, had last week sought to offer reassurance that they were determined to secure the status of the City of London.

However, the government's stated intention to take control of the freedom of movement into the UK is widely recognised among officials to be a hammer blow to any chance of retaining the present terms of trade for banks, particularly given the bellicose rhetoric of major politicians on the continent.

The so-called passporting rights for members of the single market allow UK-based banks to offer financial services to companies and individuals across the EU unimpeded, yet the French president, François Hollande, is among those who have insisted in recent weeks that hard Brexit will mean "hard negotiation" and Britain will need to "pay the price" of leaving.

A hard Brexit would involve the UK leaving both the single market, a central pillar of which is freedom of movement, and the customs union, which could potentially reintroduce tariff and non-tariff restrictions on British imports and exports.

Browne warns that British and European politicians who appear to be pursuing "anti-trade" goals need to recognise that "putting up barriers to the trade in financial services across the Channel will make us all worse off".

Click here to read more