Hop over to Paris campaign launched to take advantage of Brexit bank moves

 

 

PARIS: -- European financial centres are stepping up a charm offensive hoping to lure London’s financial movers and shakers following the Brexit vote.

 

La Defense, the financial district in Paris, has launched an advertising campaign.

 

It features a green frog wearing a tie in the blue, white and red of the French flag and the slogan ‘Tired of the fog? Try the Frogs! Choose Paris La Defense’.

 

Posters featuring the amphibian have gone up at London’s Heathrow Airport and Eurostar’s London terminus, St. Pancras.

Officials from La Defense said the adverts were to underscore its attractiveness, including things like lower rentals and good public transport.

 

Pragmatic promotion

 

“As regrettable as Britain’s exit from the European Union may be, we have to be pragmatic and promote our own assets,” said Patrick Devedjian, head of the elected council representing the Hauts-de-Seine district where La Defense is located.

 

Arnaud de Bresson, chief executive of Paris Europlace, a lobby group for the French financial district, said banks have told him there are only two choices when it comes to relocating operations from London – France or Germany.

 

“Our estimate is that close to 10,000 people involved in the financial sector could move from London to Paris in the next few years, and Paris is getting fully organised for that,” de Bresson said.

 

This summer the French government announced extra tax concessions for foreigners in the hope Paris could profit from Brexit, but experts say other centres with more flexible labour and tax rules are likely to be bigger beneficiaries.

 

Where else?

 

Frankfurt, Luxembourg and Dublin are among the European cities hoping to attract banks and other institutions from London.

They are banking on London losing its dominance as Europe’s top financial capital and want to capitalise on that.

 

Hubertus Vaeth, chief executive of Frankfurt Main Finance, which promotes Frankfurt as a financial centre, said the aim was not to inflict “as much damage as we can” on the City of London, but to siphon off some of Britain’s “entrepreneurial spirit”.

 

“We already see small teams, explorative teams looking into certain aspects,” Vaeth said. He added: “The big moves will start in the second half of 2017.”

 

However Rupert Peters, a senior account manager at Britain’s trade and investment ministry, said Frankfurt lacked both the liquidity of Britain’s financial markets and its cluster of support services.

 

Banks say they are already starting to look at relocating some staff and operations in case future access to the EU market turns out to be restricted, a scenario known as a hard Brexit.

 

“We can only plan on the basis of a hard Brexit,” said Ronald Kent, a managing director at the British Bankers’ Association (BBA) said.

 

 

-- © Copyright Euronews 2016-10-19

The only cities with the infrastructure that could come close London are:

 

New York [mainly]

Chicago [backup to NYC]

Singapore

Hong Kong

Zurich

Tokyo, but not enough English spoken to make it a contender.

 

London will NOT be made irrelevant because of Brexit.  If anything, its importance in financial markets is more solidified.  It takes more than just raising your hand and volunteering to takeover all that trading volume and securing client funds.

Edited October 19, 20169 yr by 4evermaat

Yes, head to Paris where you can enjoy biblical flooding, streets filled with garbage, striking service workers and attacks by jihadists. Yay!

 

Anyway, didn't lots of French recently withdraw to the UK due to recent tax hikes?

Recent reports stated that the European banks and the Euro were in a very fragile state, so any such move would seem to be "out of the frying pan and into the fire".  Yet another Brexit scare story !

Quote

Britain could be sued for up to millions of pounds if Brexit negotiators begin discussing trade deals with other countries before the country formally leaves the European Union.

 

http://uk.businessinsider.com/britain-brexit-article-50-european-union-theresa-may-2016-9

 

4 hours ago, webfact said:

Hop over to Paris campaign launched to take advantage of Brexit bank moves

 

Is trying to poach business before Brexit not even worse than trying to negotiate trade deals with Countries that are not even in the EU ?

 

Time to give the EU a very stiff middle finger and tell disappear.

I'm quite shocked tbh. I would of thought the French would be the last country in Europe to stab the U.K. In the back post brexit.

Edited October 19, 20169 yr by goldenbrwn1

Many of the banks have been looking at re-locating after brexit and have been looking ever since the vote.  They will want to keep their options open and Paris is an obvious choice as much of their business is done with EU countries.  The banks are located in Britain because it is the major financial centre in Europe so there is no point quoting other countries worldwide as they are already there!  We are talking about a European base.