An expert has revealed that the country has grown as a base for global lending since Brexit and banks are now expressing a softer tone towards the Brexit impact on the banking industry in the UK.
Bloomberg financial reporter Mark Whitehouse said: “People keep saying that the UK’s decision to leave the European Union will force the global financial industry to move some of its businesses out of London.
“It’s thus odd to see it doing the exact opposite, at least in terms of lending.”
Mr Whitehouse said that if banks were moving their activities to Frankfurt then there would be a decline in credit flowing from the UK to other countries. However, the expert said that “it has gone in the other direction”.
He said: “The cross-border exposures of banks located in the UK, including loans and securities, increased by $155billion from June 2016 through September 2017, according to the Bank for International Settlements.
“As a share of home country gross domestic product, that’s the second-largest gain among European countries.”
The chief of Deutsche Bank John Cryan revealed last month that Brexit will not mean a mass exodus of financial service employees after claims 4,000 jobs would move to the continent.
At the end of last year, Swiss Bank UBS said its “worst case scenario” of having to shift 1,000 jobs out of London was looking unlikely. The reporter did say that this banking exodus could still come, depending on the deal the UK strikes with the EU.
According to think-tank Bruegel, the UK could lose 10,000 banking jobs and 20,000 roles in financial services as companies move out of the UK following Brexit.
Frankfurt in Germany has been tipped as the biggest winner in the fight for London-based jobs that need to relocate to a hub inside the European Union after Brexit.