Finance Wins a Small Brexit Concession in Latest Draft Agreement

(Bloomberg) -- Financial services in the U.K. gained a small win in the latest draft Brexit agreement with a commitment to review equivalence, the framework that governs how banks from other nations do business in Europe.

The draft, seen by Bloomberg, says the cooperation should include consultation on the “process of adoption, suspension and withdrawal of equivalence decisions.”

Key Takeaways

• The future financial-services relationship between Britain and the European Union will be based on recognizing each other’s regulations, a process known as equivalence. This is what banks have been planning for.
• The agreement reiterates that Britain and the EU aim to conclude the assessments by the end of June 2020.
• An equivalence agreement would still leave London’s financial companies worse off than they are with Britain’s membership in the EU, which gives them the right to sell services across the bloc.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alexander Weber in Brussels at aweber45@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ambereen Choudhury at achoudhury@bloomberg.net, Ross Larsen, Andrew Blackman

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