In our class discussion of Module 3 we dealt with the effect of Brexit on the London financial center. While Brexit became effective on January 31, 2020, it happened without an agreement covering financial services. Many banks therefore are hedging their bets to deal with the resulting regulatory uncertainty. JP Morgan, for instance, recently chose Paris as its new EU trading hub. The picture below the headline of this recent Bloomberg story is quite symbolically powerful - a handshake between Jamie Dimon and President Emmanuel Macron of France (himself a former investment banker):
To keep things in perspective, I will note that after the expansion of JP Morgan's staff in Paris, they will have 800 employees there. They have 12,000 employees in London, and an additional 7,000 in the rest of the UK. So there is a long way to go before London loses its central role as a financial services hub - if it ever does. Still, the article illustrates how in flux things seem to be in the world of European finance.
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