So much for Project Fear!
Banks will move just 5,000 jobs – despite Remain saying 75,000
BANKS and finance companies are expecting to move 5,000 jobs out of London due to Brexit – far below the 75,000 predicted during the Project Fear campaign.
A survey of 119 international firms showed that each business expects to relocate an average of 42 roles.
This amounts to half the 10,000 jobs that they expected to move when asked six months ago.
The findings come as Theresa May today urges diehard Remainers to stop sniping at Brexit and to help make it a success. Writing in the Daily Mail, she says it is time for Leavers and Remainers to ‘put aside our differences and all pull in the same direction’.
A string of banks have publicly reversed their previous claims of mass job losses as progress has been made in negotiations between Britain and the EU, and the dangers of relocating have become clear.
Many have pressed ahead with plans for major new European headquarters in London, including some which were previously vocal critics of leaving the EU. Official figures show that the total number of banking and insurance jobs in Britain is 12,000 higher now than it was at the time of the vote.
Brexit backers said the survey by financial news service Reuters – which asked how many jobs firms would move by March 2019 – showed that predictions of a mass exodus had been overdone.
London will remain by far the largest European finance centre if the survey’s forecasts are correct.
Conservative MP John Redwood said: ‘Another completely false forecast has been blown out of the water … the City will do well after Brexit, just as it did by not joining the euro.’
Fellow Tory Jacob Rees-Mogg said: ‘Project Fear continues, even though the evidence dwindles for it by the day. The City is a global financial centre, not merely a regional European one.’
There were 1,122,000 banking and insurance jobs across the country in June 2016, according to data from the Office for National Statistics. By the end of last year there were 1,134,000 jobs in the industry.
Jamie Dimon, millionaire boss of Wall Street titan JP Morgan, threatened to sack 4,000 UK staff if Leave won the referendum. But the bank now admits Brexit ‘does not entail moving many people’.
Swiss firm UBS once warned as many as 1,500 positions would go, but the survey shows it is now expecting to move fewer than 200.
And HSBC originally claimed it was planning to move 1,000 jobs to Paris. However, bosses later said this is only a worst-case scenario.
Goldman Sachs is building an 800,000sq/ft office in London. According to the survey it will relocate 500 positions at most. It is still working on the site despite an anti-Brexit Twitter campaign by boss Lloyd Blankfein, who once said he was doing ‘God’s work’ when criticised for helping to create the financial crisis. Mr Blankfein, 63, has said there is ‘lots of hand-wringing’ about Brexit from chief executives, and called for a second referendum.
Germany’s Deutsche Bank, Wells Fargo of the US and Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation are all moving to large new offices in London. Deutsche had considered shifting 4,000 workers out of the City but has dramatically scaled this back to fewer than 200.
The Bank of England believes the financial risks of Brexit have reduced over the past year.
Paris is expected to grab the largest number of jobs from London, with 2,280 likely to move. French president Emmanuel Macron has vowed to transform the country’s sluggish economy and slash taxes in a bid to woo international finance.
‘Forecasts blown out of the water’