The U.K.
financial industry has “everything to gain” and bankers would be unlikely to
flee London if the country withdraws from the European Union, according to one
of the campaigns seeking so-called Brexit.
“The U.K.’s position as a world leader in
financial services is not dependent on its membership of the European Union,”
said Aaron Banks, the group’s co-founder. “Outside of the EU, we would be
better placed to compete with the challenge coming from cities such as Hong
Kong and Singapore.”
The group noted London already topped the
annual Zyen survey as the world’s top financial capital, outpacing its European
rivals which it said were strangled by EU regulation. The country has the
world’s fourth-largest banking industry, third-largest insurance sector and
second-largest fund management sector, Leave.EU said.
Overall, finance accounts for about 10
percent of British gross domestic product and London also houses 74 percent of
European foreign-exchange trading despite being outside the euro zone, it said.
Such data suggested that there was unlikely
to be an exodus of bankers if the U.K. did choose to quit the EU in the
referendum Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged to hold by the end of next
year, said the report’s author Ewen Stewart. “There is no significant European
Union country able to challenge the U.K.’s dominant position in financial
services,” said Stewart. “A substantial challenge would be most unlikely to
succeed from within the EU.”
British withdrawal would help banks by
reducing regulation and removing it from the risk of transaction taxes or caps
on salaries, policies that are more popular on the continent, he said. The
report was issued a week after Mark Astaire, one of Barclays Plc’s most senior
investment bankers, said London would “continue to thrive” as a financial
center even if the U.K. was outside the EU.
Πηγή:
bloomberg.com
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου