City ‘must innovate to stave off its post-EU competitors’
A former top EU policymaker, Baroness Bowles, has shrugged off concerns about a loss of power in the City saying it was “game on” for financiers to innovate.
Bowles, ex-chair of the EU Parliament’s economic and monetary affairs committee, said London’s infrastructure and share of global financial trade meant it would remain top dog despite growing competition from Frankfurt and Paris.
“I’m optimistic. I can’t deny it could be diminished but to some extent it is also ‘game on’ for the City. We’re the big financial capital and we are innovative, we can work our way around this. We’ve got around traps before,” she said.
Policymakers have pointed to the potential loss of euro clearing jobs as evidence of a post-Brexit negative but Bowles said block chain technology, which could enable instant trading and settlement, meant London could stay ahead if it was innovative.
The upbeat assessment could comfort some of London’s 400,000 financial services workers, who face an uncertain future after the UK voted to leave the 27-nation trading bloc.
Bowles, who chaired the committee between 2009 and 2014, was responsible for steering the EU’s financial regulatory framework in the wake of the 2008 crisis.
She said bankers thinking the UK’s exit from the EU meant less regulation were in for a shock, adding that the Financial Conduct Authority would still implement EU trading rules called Mifid II in 2019 even though the UK will be out of Europe.
“There will be no bonfire of regulations. On prudential regulation we will be as strict. Our attitude on that, including Solvency II for the insurance sector, was that we wanted to be stricter than Europe. The Brits invented it,” she said.
