Germans: We’ll nab 8,000 British bankers

GERMAN leaders plotting to snatch business from the City of London have boasted that Brexit will create 8,000 banking jobs in Frankfurt.

The city has mounted a charm offensive to lure companies away from Britain, and has ordered its own financial firms to trumpet Germany’s virtues.

Yesterday, an economist for the Hess-Thuringia State Bank said at least half the jobs leaving the City will move to Frankfurt.

But although the Germans see capturing 8,000 roles as a triumph, this number is still dwarfed by the 140,000 bankers who work in London. And it is far below the doom-mongering estimates by some of Britain’s own businesses.

Earlier this year, a report by consultant Oliver Wyman claimed 40,000 investment banking jobs could go from the UK after Brexit – although critics have always claimed these numbers are an overblown effort to make ministers bow to the wishes of big business. The Hesse-Thuringia State Bank has released a study which puts Frankfurt firmly ahead of rivals Paris and Dublin in the race for London’s scraps, with a 4 per cent rise in banking jobs expected by the end of 2019.

Although many lenders based in the UK have threatened to move employees, few have so far acted on this claim. For example, Wall Street bank JP Morgan’s boss Jamie Dimon said before the referendum that he would sack 4,000 British workers if the country dared to vote to leave the EU.

But he has since performed a U-turn, admitting the vote would ‘not entail moving many people’ immediately. And despite the report’s claims, a vast gulf remains between Frankfurt and true global financial centres such as London.

The City handles £659trillion of euro, yen and dollar trades every year – more than every eurozone country combined.