Currently a lot of fincancial products can be created and managed in London, since once approved there, they are automatically approved in all other EU member states, too.
This of course will have to change once the UK has left the EU, making the people involved in these processes one of the first to be moved to Franfkurt etc.
One of the main attractions of London as a banking centre is its EU membership. Sure, there are others, but it seems extremely likely that companies will relocate because they judge access to the EU market as more important.
Underestimating the soft diplomatic skills of the English. It has always been their strength, not treaties. In no time you will see London be an Asian financial hub. They didn't need to be one before because they had it easy with the EU. But when they lose that business, they'll get to work in Asia. The distance won't matter.
Europe has been unable to recreate Silicon Valley for a large number of reasons none of which have anything to do with why they can't move their financial center to Frankfurt.
Just a couple of them:
- no single language market of 300M people
- different attitude towards investment
- different attitude towards entrepreneurship
- no reason to cluster that much in such a small space
In fact, the US has been unable to 'recreate Silicon Valley', it's a world-wide accidental one-off and drawing parallels between its one-off-existence, lack of being replicated anywhere at all and the fact that London was a banking capital before the EU existed does nothing to guarantee Londons continued existence as a banking capital outside an otherwise unified EU once a large number of very relevant parties pulls out and is drawing very strange conclusions out of unrelated data.
The biggest hits from the brexit will be felt in London and it is already happening.
> Europe has been unable to recreate Silicon Valley for a large number of reasons none of which have anything to do with why they can't move their financial center to Frankfurt.
I'd argue that a lot of the reasons overlap. The key ones being: pre-existing access to capital, access to talent, and tolerance for risk-taking.
Capital is very easy to move (and is already moving), banking talent is not rare and tolerance for risk taking? We're talking about banking here. The tolerance for risk taking in banking goes just so far that you are not fired if the risk is covered before you are found out. Start-ups and banking have very little to do with each other.
I'd like to see a start-up succeed under the kind of risk-averse attitude that's prevalent in a bank and the kind of reporting duties they have.
Note that NYC is the banking center of the United States (and to some extent of the world) and that NYC also did not manage to re-create Silicon Valley.
20-somethings at Wall Street and City firms are making billion dollar trades--ones where even a small amount of risk can yield huge losses. That takes an appetite for risk. Those firms have pipelines funneling in the top graduates from the top schools. They've got access to (rare) talent. They've got the connections with individual and institutional investors that can raise billions of dollars on tight timelines to finance mergers, acquisitions, or expansion. That's access to capital that could move but isn't necessarily going to. And they've got a well-developed supporting infrastructure of accountants, lawyers, and analysts helping to keep the gears turning.
There might not be an EU by the time Scotland gets a vote to secede
Doubtful: As long as France and Germany are on board, the EU will survive in some fashion.
The comment[1] of German economist Max Otte[2] regarding the British vote? Good riddance, now we can stop accomodating UK sensibilities. Also remember, when the UK wanted to join the EEC? De Gaulle sent them packing twice...
> Doubtful: As long as France and Germany are on board, the EU will survive in some fashion.
I would go further than that, while you are absolutely right, long before we reach that point we have the "second core" of Belgium, Italy and Spain, none of which are actually leaving anytime soon. Can add Portugal, Austria and Luxembourg as a "sure takers" third wave.
> Doubtful: As long as France and Germany are on board, the EU will survive in some fashion.
I disagree. The UK was the third largest net contributor to the EU, and one of only ~10 member states that have historically made positive net contributions.
Its influence and role as a net importer from the EU will see it win a relatively favorable exit, including access to the single market.
The UK exit, in addition to the financial impact on the EU, will inspire many other member states on the verge of leaving to do the same.
The EU is already on thin ice, and the UK voting to leave may have just been the straw that broke the camel's back.
Between Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders they can still do a lot of damage to those countries but NL without the EU is a joke and France has way too much to lose (more than the UK did) so I highly doubt (hope?) that this will not come to pass.
Le Pen has less elected member of parliament than I have fingers on one of my hands (and I have the regular five fingers by hand).
Even in their "great swipe" of 2014, they got 14 mayors total. In a country counting roughly 36 000 mayors (yes, I know ...).
The FN is actually very very weak, it keeps being seen doing huge jump forwards in numbers but that's mostly because the others are being very dumb and for the FN a single new member of parliament is a 50% jump ahead, which makes for a good headline.
The FN biggest strength is actually the media attention they get and how it drives them forward, there was a study about that showing they were te party being given the most media attention and it giving them the biggest result boost (despite "we are ignored by the media" being on their main card, like all populist parties)
This of course will have to change once the UK has left the EU, making the people involved in these processes one of the first to be moved to Franfkurt etc.