All the reforms we could have made while in the EU – and all those that had to wait until Brexit

Over a third of the 30 rule changes would have been impossible in the union, says

Six years on from the Brexit vote, warnings of an exodus of money and jobs from the City have proven to be overblown. Brexit has not led to a crash for the City.

But until yesterday’s “Big Bang 2.0”,

Britain had also failed to take advantage of the opportunities available to give London a competitive edge.

Jeremy Hunt will hope that his sweeping reforms can now relax and reshape the most onerous rules.

Experts say over a third of the more than 30 reforms outlined in the shake-up have been made possible by the UK’S departure from the EU.

Some of the others being removed were imposed in the wake of the financial crisis to prevent excessive

risk-taking, but are now deemed unnecessary.

Mr Hunt said that Brexit freedoms have given the UK “more latitude” and allowed it to “do more” than it otherwise would have been able to.

Changes only made possible because of Brexit include tailored rules on short-selling, altering the Mifid rules and replacing the Packaged Retail and Insurance-based Investment Products (PRIIPS) regulations, which forced investment funds to produce

documents for their products that they complained were onerous and misleading to consumers.

Other post-brexit changes include removing burdens on commodities derivative trading and introducing a listings shake-up that has been proposed for London’s stock market.

However, Mr Hunt also admitted that many of the most important reforms should have been done even before Brexit.

“There are plenty of things amongst these reforms that we could have done anyway, [and] we should have done,” said the Chancellor.

“This demonstrates us wanting to be constantly ahead of the game.”

Giving the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority a new goal to make the UK financial sector more competitive globally and reforming bank ring fencing could have been introduced without Brexit.

Can the new rules give the UK a sharper edge?

Chris Woolard, UK financial services regulation leader at EY, said the

Government is trying to put together a package that targets the competitiveness of the UK.

“It’s a clear attempt to try and make the UK as relevant a possible jurisdiction to do business in the future,” he said.

“There’s an element of adjusting post exit, there’s an element of adjusting actually some UK reforms that happened after the financial crisis and there’s an element of catching up with where technology is going with digital assets.”