London has lost its coveted position as the world’s top financial centre thanks in part to uncertainty over Brexit.
The Duff & Phelps survey of senior financial services executives promoted New York to the top spot in a significant shake up of conventional rankings.
London suffered a 19 percentage point decline as just over one-third of executives said they would choose the UK’s capital — down from 53 per cent in 2018.
Meanwhile 56 per cent said they considered New York to be the world’s pre-eminent financial hub — up from 42 per cent in 2018.
“It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that three years of uncertainty since the Brexit vote has contributed to London’s fall,” said Monique Melis, the global head of regulation and compliance at Duff & Phelps.
“While London was still considered the pre-eminent financial hub in 2018, it could be that the shockwaves of the EU negotiations have started to show.”
However Ms Melis suggested that Boris Johnson’s thumping general election victory last month, which has paved the way for the UK’s exit from the EU on Friday, could give London a boost.
“If this is the primary reason for London’s changing fortunes, then the resolution of the UK’s departure could see it bouncing back,” she added.
The news comes investment bank JP Morgan Chase announced it had purchased a new building in Paris capable of holding 450 people as it plans to move out of London following Brexit.
The newcomers will join the 260 employees already working in the French capital, the bank said in a statement.
“After multiple government reforms and given the intrinsic nature of Parisian infrastructure, this is the ideal time to invest here and for more of our staff to settle here,” said Kyril Courboin, the bank’s managing director in France.
The move “will give the bank the opportunity to pursue growth in France, in line with its strategy to continue to serve its European clients seamlessly from the continent’s major cities, including Frankfurt, Luxembourg and Dublin,” the statement added.
CEO Jamie Dimon said at the beginning of 2019 that JPMorgan planned to shift “several hundred” jobs from London to the continent due to Brexit. The bank already moved a handful of employees at the end of 2018.
