City of London after Brexit

On 30 December 2020 on the BBC, Boris Johnson said that the City of London would, post Brexit, ‘adapt and prosper mightily’

Please note that the City of London was worth 10 % of the UK’s GDP and contributed 11.5% of the UK tax revenue.

Well the scorecard after one week’s trading is pretty conclusively the opposite to what Boris was predicting.

On last Monday, the first day of post-Brexit trading, some 5 billion Euros worth of shares in European companies, such as Volkswagen and BNP Paribas stopped being traded in London and went to European financial centres such as Frankfurt, Paris and Amsterdam.

This move was a direct result of EU Financial regulations which require EU firms, when trading in EU companies, to do it on EU stock exchanges, which of course London no longer is.

Did Boris not know this, or is it just yet another case of his ignoring simple facts of life he does not like?

Put simply it was a case of the EU taking back control. Now where have I heard that before?

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