Credit Suisse Still Assessing Exact Scope of Brexit Banker Moves
Credit Suisse Still Assessing Exact Scope of Brexit Banker Moves
(Bloomberg) -- Credit Suisse Group AG’s chief executive officer said the lender will keep evaluating how many bankers will leave London due to Brexit.
The bank currently plans to move between 250 and 300 people from London, Thomas Gottstein said at a conference in Zurich on Wednesday. Some of those bankers will go to Madrid, where the Swiss bank is building a euro-area investment banking hub.
The precise number will depend on how the final months of negotiations develop between Britain and the European Union and how London’s status as a financial center evolves.
Gottstein’s comments are a reminder that more than four years after the Brexit vote, its ultimate impact on London’s future is an open question. The Brexit transition period is set to expire at the end of 2020, and negotiations over the future trade deal are deadlocked.
Far fewer bankers than expected have left so far. Firms had moved about 1,000 people by last September, compared with a prediction of 7,000 by the consulting firm EY. However, with a formal Brexit negotiating round set to begin next week, some U.K. lawmakers are worried about the risk of a chaotic split.
“The omens do not look good,” Baroness Patience Wheatcroft, a former financial news editor and member of the House of Lords, said during a U.K. parliamentary hearing Wednesday. “The financial-services industry risks being badly damaged.”
Brexit-driven banking moves that have already taken place include JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. expanding their footprints in Paris. Switzerland’s UBS Group AG merged its U.K. and EU entities, giving it the flexibility to move staff around the region.
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