Paris hails arrival of finance jobs from London

More than 3,000 financial sector jobs have relocated from London to Paris as a result of the UK's vote to leave the European Union, according to a report from a lobby group in the French capital.

David Sapsted

11 December 2020

With the Brexit transition period ending on December 31, no equivalence agreement has been reached between the EU and UK, which would allow British-based financial services to continue to operate freely throughout the bloc.The failure to reach such a deal has led to Miles Celic, CEO of the financial services advocacy group TheCityUK, to accuse Brussels of “regrettable politiicsation” of the equivalence assessment process.TheCityUK expects Brexit to lead to a loss of 40 per cent of the 20 per cent of UK finance directed at EU customers and Mr Celic told the House of Commons' Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Select Committee this week that Brussels had unnecessarily damaged the UK’s financial services sector.“We’ve seen a regrettable politicisation of what ought to be technical decisions on the European side,” he said, according to a City AM report.

“The equivalence process has unfortunately become politicised and companies will look at this, consider there is uncertainty, consider there is a cost and, particularly with some foreign companies, they may decide for now that the United States or Asia is a better bet, certainly in the short or medium term.”EY estimates that more than 7,500 jobs and £1.2 trillion of assets have already moved to the EU since the Brexit referendum, with Frankfurt, Dublin and Paris being among the main winners.According French lobby group Paris Europlace, 3,517 of those jobs have now relocated to the Paris region in the scramble among European capitals to attract banks, insurance companies and other firms in the sector that need to establish post-Brexit hubs in the EU.

Paris as a growing financial centre – what are the education options?

Paris Europlace JPMorgan and Japan’s Nomura among those that had shifted large numbers of asset managers and other staff to Paris, along with French banks BNP Paribas and Societe Generale, which have extensive operations in Britain. Bank of America and Goldman Sachs have also chosen Paris for their European trading platforms.Overall, the group said that sectors such as healthcare and car manufacturers had, along with finance, increased the number of jobs in Paris by an estimated 5,000.Arnaud de Bresson, the chief executive of Paris Europlace, said he believed that 10,000 jobs would be created in finance alone in Paris as a result of Brexit. “We believe that we will have an acceleration in transfers from London” once Britain formally leaves the single market at year's end, he added.