London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Friday, Oct 03, 2025

How is Britain's financial services industry faring after Brexit?

How is Britain's financial services industry faring after Brexit?

It’s an industry that, in 2019, contributed nearly $200 billion to the U.K.’s economy, and supported nearly a million jobs.

Britain’s divorce from the European Union was finalized nearly a year and a half ago, but it’s been just six months since the country’s transition out of the bloc was completed.

A number of 11th-hour discussions took place in December to determine how industries, such as fishing, would operate in a post-Brexit environment. But one large sector almost completely left out of those talks? Financial services.

It’s an industry that, in 2019, contributed nearly $200 billion to the U.K.’s economy, and supported nearly a million jobs. What’s more, financial services exports totaled more than $83 billion, more than three times what it imported.

And that’s the crucial reason the sector was left out of trade negotiations, according to London School of Economics professor Iain Begg.

Below is an edited version of his conversation with the BBC’s Victoria Craig on the global edition of “Marketplace Morning Report.”

Iain Begg: Boris Johnson was very keen to get to a trade deal in the sense of the old-fashioned trade in goods to avoid any tariffs [on financial services]. Tariffs don’t apply to financial services, so it’s outside that negotiation. Also, the whole point of Britain leaving the single market and leaving the [European] Customs Union was to regulate the way we wanted to, and not have to depend on getting an agreement with Brussels. The European side said, “Well, no, if if that’s the way you want to play it, then we can’t agree [on] free access to your financial services exporters.”

Victoria Craig: How concerned do you think the City of London should be — that it should have more deals in place or that it should be working on those deals? Because there doesn’t really seem to be much appetite from the EU side to agree to anything at this point.

Begg: One cynical interpretation is that for the EU, getting some of the activity that’s currently in London is seen as winning a prize. If something migrates to Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam or Dublin, then the EU countries in question, are going to benefit from this. So they are a no great hurry to deal with something in which the U.K. is a standout, successful exporter of financial and indeed other business services. But the City is maybe looking outside at the same time, saying, the future is the global marketplace, not so much the EU marketplace so we can tolerate losing a bit of our activity in in the EU, provided we can gain it from the rest of the world.

Craig: We have seen some of that early evidence of other cities trying to court that London business. Reports that French President Emmanuel Macron is going to seriously start courting big financial services companies to move to Paris to make that the financial capital. There’s been sort of a lot of rumblings that perhaps Paris or Frankfurt could take London’s crown. Do you see that happening?

Begg: In a word, no. Paris has been trying to steal the City of London’s crown for the best part of 200 years and has yet to succeed. And in any case, although Macron has been able to offer dinners at the Élysée Palace to putative movers from London, it’s Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Dublin, as well as Luxembourg, which tended to have been more successful in attracting the limited amount of financial services activity that’s moving from London. It’s also worth stressing that where London stands out, apart from having the English language, in this light regulatory regime, is in having a background infrastructure of other business services, which feed into financial services, notably law consultancy and accountancy, and no other European center or president can come close to matching that.

Craig: So even though London may be sort of on its back foot now that we’re into this post-Brexit era, it hasn’t necessarily lost anything. Would you categorize it that way?

Begg: Yes. So far, there’s been a trickle of jobs and certain activities, which are very clearly related to the euro, there has been some movement of asset management. But, overall, it’s it’s relatively limited. And I think that’s why the City remains quite relaxed.

Craig: Do you think there will be a point when the City gets a little bit more concerned? Would it just be if it isn’t able to make deals with other countries, like the U.S., or countries in Asia?

Begg: There’s an element of wait and see to the answer to that question, because we don’t quite know how things are moving, not just on the regulatory front, but in technology. Financial services overall is a very fast moving activity. And we see this all the time with new products being invented, new ways of doing business. The word “fintech” will crop up as a as a way of explaining how things are changing. So at this point, the City thinks it’s nimble enough to be able to cope with what gets thrown at it and isn’t that fearful.

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
FBI Removes Agents Who Kneeled at 2020 Protest, Citing Breach of Professional Conduct
Trump Alleges ‘Triple Sabotage’ at United Nations After Escalator and Teleprompter Failures
Shock in France: 5 Years in Prison for Former President Nicolas Sarkozy
Tokyo’s Jimbōchō Named World’s Coolest Neighbourhood for 2025
European Officials Fear Trump May Shift Blame for Ukraine War onto EU
BNP Paribas Abandons Ban on 'Controversial Weapons' Financing Amid Europe’s Defence Push
Typhoon Ragasa Leaves Trail of Destruction Across East Asia Before Making Landfall in China
The Personality Rights Challenge in India’s AI Era
Big Banks Rebuild in Hong Kong as Deal Volume Surges
Italy Considers Freezing Retirement Age at 67 to Avert Scheduled Hike
Italian City to Impose Tax on Visiting Dogs Starting in 2026
Arnault Denounces Proposed Wealth Tax as Threat to French Economy
Study Finds No Safe Level of Alcohol for Dementia Risk
Denmark Investigates Drone Incursion, Does Not Rule Out Russian Involvement
Lilly CEO Warns UK Is ‘Worst Country in Europe’ for Drug Prices, Pulls Back Investment
Nigel Farage Emerges as Central Force in British Politics with Reform UK Surge
Disney Reinstates ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ after Six-Day Suspension over Charlie Kirk Comments
U.S. Prosecutors Move to Break Up Google’s Advertising Monopoly
Nvidia Pledges Up to $100 Billion Investment in OpenAI to Power Massive AI Data Center Build-Out
U.S. Signals ‘Large and Forceful’ Support for Argentina Amid Market Turmoil
Nvidia and Abu Dhabi’s TII Launch First AI-&-Robotics Lab in the Middle East
Vietnam Faces Up to $25 Billion Export Loss as U.S. Tariffs Bite
Europe Signals Stronger Support for Taiwan at Major Taipei Defence Show
Indonesia Court Upholds Military Law Amid Concerns Over Expanded Civilian Role
Larry Ellison, Michael Dell and Rupert Murdoch Join Trump-Backed Bid to Take Over TikTok
Trump and Musk Reunite Publicly for First Time Since Fallout at Kirk Memorial
Vietnam Closes 86 Million Untouched Bank Accounts Over Biometric ID Rules
×