Bank of England says not worried for now over ‘Brexodus’ in banker jobs

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LONDON — The Bank of England is not worried for now over how many bankers have left London for EU financial hubs after Brexit, BoE Deputy Governor Sam Woods said on Tuesday, adding that fewer had moved abroad than expected.

Britain fully left the European Union at the end of 2020 and its financial firms no longer have unfettered “passporting,” or full access to investors in the bloc.

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To avoid disruption, banks, insurers and asset managers have opened scores of hubs in the bloc, and the number of staff that have moved so far is about 7,000, according to calculations by consultants EY in March, below initial estimates.

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The Bank of England predicted in 2018 that between 5,000 to 10,000 financial jobs might be lost when Britain formally left the European Union.

The European Central Bank has been putting pressure on banks to staff the new banking hubs in Frankfurt and elsewhere with sufficiently senior employees in roles such as trading.

“The short answer to your question is that at the moment I’m not concerned about that,” Woods told a news conference when asked if he was worried about the City losing its global standing after Brexit.

“The reason for that is that it was always clear that with passporting falling away as part of Brexit and various other changes, that our colleagues in the ECB would require more entities in the EU, and as part of that there would be some staffing implications,” Woods said.

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“So that’s always been I think priced in, at least certainly from our point of view.”

Woods said the total job moves were a small percentage of overall jobs in Britain’s financial sector.

“Our key interest has been in making sure that any changes that take place are based on proper regulatory concerns and are not a kind of land grab,” Woods said.

“And secondly that the new structures, which are of course a bit more complex than what we had before Brexit, can be overseen and also manage risks properly within the firms,” he added. “And on both of those scores, I think we’re fine.” (Reporting by Huw Jones, David Milliken and Paul Sandle; Editing by Crispian Balmer)