UBS boss: Brexit has left the EU struggling

THE european Union faces ‘ fundamental problems’ after Brexit as it misses Britain’s financial expertise, the chairman of bank giant UBS said yesterday.

Colm Kelleher told a Bloomberg event in Davos it was a ‘tragedy’ for the bloc that it had lost the ‘market proficiency and skill’ when the UK left.

The remarks are a rare acknowledgement that europe suffered from the divorce, in contrast with the usual focus on Britain’s post-Brexit challenges.

‘The EU has fundamental problems,’ said Kelleher, an Irishman, whose business in Switzerland is, like Britain, outside the bloc.

he pointed out that europe’s equity markets proportion of the overall global total was 50pc lower than it was 13 years ago, saying the EU must step up efforts to achieve a capital markets and banking union.

‘europe is positively not benefiting from having vibrant capital markets’ with ‘significant pools of money moving to the US, the only viable market,’ Kelleher said. ‘One of the tragedies of the EU is that Britain left and Britain was a leader in market proficiency and skill and expertise, and europe is an essentially closed market.

‘So I think europe is having to find its way without Britain and I think that has been the difference.’ UBS is still grappling with the integration of Credit Suisse, which it saved from collapse last year.

Kelleher said the exodus of funds that led to the crisis was being reversed. ‘We’re confident that we’re rebuilding that. The degree to which we can make up all that loss, we don’t know,’ he said.