So, I think the real issue was the new investments (net FDI fell off a cliff for years after the vote). Generally companies won't move unless forced to, but new companies generally seemed to avoid the UK post Brexit.
In fact, Ireland benefited from a bunch of this, I worked for 1-2 companies who'd moved their headquarters and staff from the UK to IE because they needed an EU base.
> Indeed London is still a very attractive place for EU skilled labour despite the added friction.
Honestly, not unless you work in finance. I was offered a Big tech role in London a few years back, and it was basically my euro salary converted into pounds, so it didn't make any financial sense for me to move (which is easy because I'm an Irish citizen).
I don't know what stats you're looking at. As a percentage of market share the UK is essentially where it was in 2017 and inline with historical trends. Moreover it has been recently increasing largely due to poor conditions in Germany.
https://www.ey.com/en_uk/newsroom/2024/07/foreign-direct-inv...
You'll need to download the XLS file but it definitely seems to show substantial declines since 2016 (post Brexit vote).
That being said, the numbers are so large that I'm concerned I'm misinterpeting something.
My original comment was based on something reported in the FT recently, though I find myself unable to find the article itself.
it's an insignificant fraction of financial services London provides and certainly not significant data point to measure the EU against London
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_stock_exchanges (Nasdaq Nordic and Baltic are presented combined into one valuation)
exchange traded equities are a minority of trading (probably not even 1%)
Great for their home country, bad for the UK.
London is #2 Nearest EU is at #10
a) Having English be the national language is a massive advantage which only Ireland shares (and Ireland has plenty of American tech outposts). That's an advantage people don't mention often.
b) The EU keeps adding regulations, which make it a less attractive place to invest. The UK seems to copy each of these regulations though, which maybe makes this a moot point.
But I think ultimately, it's probably down to network effects. The same way Twitter/X stuck around even though basically everything about it changed, cities might do the same.
The UK and EU have roughly similar problems, benefits, infrastructure and regulatory environments.
If there was a Singapore-like city state off of the coast of France, I'm sure things would look different.
Which new EU regulation since Brexit has UK copied into law?
...and then proceeded to basically copy every EU regulation. Whatever one's take is on EU regulation, it's just odd to me to do that because you basically lose the upside of the EU while keeping the downside.
The result is we suffered only 10% of the maximum damage in exchange for 0% of the "advantages" (can't sign our own trade deals, no say in the EU, must take rules, last in queue for access etc).
I think this is actually the worst outcome long term: a car crash hard Brexit would have all but assured reentry in the long term. Instead we will be in Europe for all practical purposes but dragging our feet at the back...
this is not true in the slightest, we had the 2nd hardest exit possible
a possible outcome could have been that we left the EU and remained in the EU single market and EU customs union
there's this rather famous EU commission slide of the various options the UK could take: https://i.kinja-img.com/image/upload/c_fit,q_60,w_1315/adf2f... with integration decreasing as you move right (the "brexit hardness")
we ended up with the Canada option, the only harder option would have been to drop out without a signed deal (which thankfully didn't happen)
As for finance, it seems a complicated area. Some UK companies seem to list on the NYSE now which is a reminder that when we lose things they don't only have to be lost to the EU.
Do you feel differently?Are you baiting some reponse for sake of proving a point?
The predicted overnight exodus didn't happen, but I'm certainly seeing a slow bleed out happening. We've had attrition on London headcount & all the replacements are in EU.