rashbre central: no room for the sky to fall

Friday 18 November 2016

no room for the sky to fall


Now it's Germany’s finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble attempting to set some UK-exit ground rules. Unsurprisingly, he indicates ongoing payments to the EU, possibly as far as to 2030, as well as an exit fee of around £50 billion. And this is all ahead of formal button pushing.

The Germans seem to be adopting a similar line to the French, where President François Hollande is worried about anti-EU sentiment, which could also be further reflected by other countries like Italy and the Netherlands.

There's also Brussels-based attempts to fiddle around with UK trade agreements, like whatever has been done to help Sunderland with the recent Nissan deal.

In one forward looking statement, Mrs May is hinting at UK 'open for global business', which could imply tax breaks and other incentives in the future.

Curiously enough, around 170 other countries manage to trade globally outside of the EU so with Great Britain as around fifth largest global economy, there ought to be a way. As a metropolitan who benefitted from working all over Europe I voted to remain, but now we've decided to leave, we'd better get on with it and look towards the long waves rather then getting distracted by busy-body splashing noises.

Herr Schäuble has also broken cover on pushing for London to lose its Euro-clearing rights, which would push banking jobs to the European mainland. The populist estimate is between 70,000 and 85,000 jobs out of the City.

EY's report to the LSE breaks it down further suggesting 31,000 core intermediary jobs (brokers and traders) plus 18k jobs in professional and legal, 15k in wealth management and 12k in IT. Frankfurt and Paris are already making attempts to attract the bigger banks and the location enquiries are flowing.

Of course, the consultancies are already lining up their sales documents to the big FSIs, like that dubious leaked memo from Deloitte the other day.

EY has another more readily available paper addressed to the institutions who may need help deciding what to do. Their overhead picture of the Bank of England and the Royal Exchange appears to shows London's city streets paved with gold, at least for the consultants?

Actually, the latest crane survey for London still shows plenty of new developments, and it's only necessary to stand on the South Bank near to the Tate Modern and look across to do a personal survey. Suffice to say there's plenty of new office space.

Probably enough to move Parliament across whilst they redevelop the Palace of Westminster and add in the theme park elements.

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