Comment by notahacker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by notahacker | Hacker News Reader

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Tariffs aren't the only factor in the assumed business losses, and they're probably not the biggest.

It's the loss of things like financial services companies based in London being able to readily "passport" their services into other EU countries without relying on local branch offices somewhere in the EU that will really hurt.

When it comes to passporting rights, it's very much in the interests of the EU to tell the UK to bugger off, and let the London HQs relocate a whole bunch of jobs to Frankfurt or Paris or Tallinn if they want to carry on doing business with EU nationals. This is likely bad if you work in some London-based back office role for a big European bank; really bad if you're a London-based fintech startup aiming to serve most European markets.

So the net "winner" for financial services might be Germany? If I were looking for a new financial head office, I would be inclined to locate it in the EU's largest and most stable economy, right?

London is only the financial powerhouse it is because of its dubious status as the least regulated economy with access to the EU market. If they lose said access, that role naturally goes to Luxembourg, the next-least-regulated economy, and that's where these services will move to.

just as an aside, Luxembourg is not really an unregulated economy. it's very popular for fin companies because in addition to access to EU, the regulators (so I hear from my peers in legal) are very proactive speaking to companies to make it easier to set up there, and are quite prompt and more flexible than other countries in assisting companies on ambiguity in interpretation of regulations.

Of course it's not unregulated, and neither is the uk, it's just that the regulations are more relaxed compared to the rest of the eu.

Especially given how cheap real estate in Berlin is compared to London.

Berlin will gain the least.

The city may lose up to 30% (google Euro clearing and ECB. I was always a big issue). It will move to Luxembourg, Frankfurt, Paris and Dublin. Possibly Scotland if Scotland decides to secede - a vague possibility.

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