Huw Jones

LONDON, (Reuters) – Despite billions in shares being moved to Europe and London losing its most access to EU capital markets due to Brexit, the number of financial jobs moving from Britain to the EU is lower than originally expected. Consultants EY stated Monday that this was despite the fact that London lost the majority of its EU-based trading connections.

Oliver Wyman and other analysts estimated that Britain would lose up to 35,000 of its financial service jobs after the referendum.

Britain resigned from the EU completely in December. This ended the City of London’s free access to its largest export customer.

EY’s latest Brexit tracker stated that “but, over the past year, many of the UK’s largest investment banks have reduced the number of employees who will relocate to the EU. This brings the total number of Brexit-related announcements down to just below 7,400 from 7,600 December 2020.”

These are just a few of the nearly 1.1million people who work in finance.

EY stated that there have been approximately 2,800 EU hires due to Brexit. This avoids the need for staff to be relocated from London. There were also 2,200 new finance jobs created in the UK.

EY stated that EU regulators have continued to pressure financial firms to make the necessary operational and headcount moves to the EU to avoid being delayed by pandemic.

The European Central Bank is trying to prevent hubs that are run out of London.

EY reported that Dublin, Luxembourg and Luxembourg were the most sought-after destinations post Brexit for EU hubs. Paris however has seen the largest number of personnel relocations.

Assets in excess of 1.3 trillion Pounds have been transferred across the Channel from the Hubs to their assets.

Omar Ali, EMEIA’s Financial Services Leader at EY, stated that “for many financial service firms, we still are far from being fully ‘post-Brexit’.”

Although there have been progress in euro clearing, Brussels still has not signed off on the new forum of financial regulators that was established in principle last December.

Miles Celic is the chief executive officer of TheCityUK which promotes Britain’s international financial center. He said that it was now time for Britain to concentrate on long-term, competitive factors.

Britain began to overhaul UK laws to make London attractive to international investors. The UK also competes better with EU centers such as Amsterdam. Amsterdam took over the UK capital in January, becoming Europe’s most important share trading hub.

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