Brexit: relocating ‘would cost £50,000 per employee’
Banks and other financial services companies considering moving from London to another European city are told they should think carefully.
Banks and other financial services companies considering moving from London to another European city are told they should think carefully.
It would cost banks and other financial services companies an average of £50,000 (US$64,915) per employee to relocate parts of their UK workforce to another European city in the wake of Brexit, an analysis suggests.
Financial services consultancy Crossbridge – now part of the Synechron group – has come up with the figure, which it calculated using estimated relocation, hiring and redundancy costs, new building and rent expenditure and other infrastructure and some contingency costs.
“Following the UK’s decision to leave the European Union (EU), many banks and financial services firms are having to consider where best to locate certain parts of their workforce,” said Tim Cuddeford, a London-based member of Synechron’s business consulting practice.
“Financial ‘passporting’ is vital to the work many banks undertake across Europe and they will have to think carefully about which city within the EU their interests and their clients’ interests will be best served.
“Our calculations show that it could cost these firms on average £50,000 per employee to relocate parts of their workforce out of the UK, perhaps to financial centres such as Amsterdam, Dublin, Paris and Frankfurt. Other cities may be just as competitive and worth considering as long as there is access to similar talent pool and infrastructure.”