City of London cuts Brexit job loss estimate | City A.M.
The City will lose as few as 5,000 jobs because of Brexit – far lower than originally feared – according to an estimate by the City of London Corporation due to be released in September.
The internal report, shared ahead of time with politics specialist Politico, suggest the City of London Corporation has rowed back from previous estimates that put the total job losses at as much as 75,000, based on a 2016 report by consultants Oliver Wyman.
It now believes between 5,000 and 13,000 London-based jobs will have gone by the time the UK leaves the EU in March next year.
Policy chief Catherine McGuinnness had told the Brexit Select Committee she believed the initial job loss would come in between 3,500 and 12,000, although warned it could creep up in the subsequent months depending on the type of deal the UK government reaches with Brussels.
Lord mayor of London Charles Bowman told Politico the City feels increasingly confident that “barring dotting of i’s and crossing of t’s,” the transition period is a done deal, and that the sector will back the government on its new model of expanded equivalence, despite having pushed for the closer model of mutual recognition.
“We will be working with all our stakeholders in the weeks ahead to determine what that looks like,” Bowman said.
He argued the City’s future will be defined less by Brexit than new developments like the rise of fintech, which accounts for around 50,000 of the City’s 483,000 jobs.
“If we are to lose some of [the existing] jobs, they are going to be the jobs that probably in five-to-10 year’s time are not going to be around, or are not going to be in the same shape or form as today — because the sort of joining of technology with finance at this moment in time is creating a very different dynamic,” he said.