With the Brexit deadline quickly approaching the three top banks in France are going full steam ahead with their plans to cut staffing in the United Kingdom.
The firms in question - BNP Paribas SA, Credit Agricole SA, and Societe Generale SA are together preparing to move around 500 positions from London. The majority of these will be moved to Paris.
Accord to a report from Bloomberg, Credit Agricole currently anticipates relocating as many as 100 positions from its London office. The firm plans to move them to Paris and other cities within Europe.
In a Bloomberg TV interview on Wednesday, Credit Agricole Chief Financial Officer Jerome Grivet said: “If some activities are better positioned tomorrow in Paris than in London, we can very easily move our teams or to hire new people in Paris. All in all, Brexit is going to require some work from us [but] it’s not a strategic issue.”
For BNP Paribas, a spokeswoman said earlier this week that if a so-called “hard Brexit” occurs, the bank will move 85-90 global-market employees out of London. Societe Generale repeated that it expects to move around 300 employs from Britain’s financial hub last week. The bank also said that it would assist the small number of its employees that will be impacted by the changes.
Since Article 50 was activated, financial institutions have been putting in place their post-Brexit plans. To take on the incoming employees, the three banks already have financial hubs in France, as well as operations throughout Europe.
Brexit Impact on the FX Job Market
Since the United Kingdom invoked Article 50 in March 2017, fears have been building as to whether Britain leaving the bloc would destroy London’s financial hub. Although some large firms are moving employees away from the United Kingdom, it appears that the country’s finance industry - and more specifically its Forex industry - is still going strong.
As part of a four-part series taking a look at human resource trends in the financial industry, Finance Magnates assessed the impact Brexit has had on the forex job market. The overall consensus? So far, the damage has been limited. In fact, we found that recruitment specialists and brokers alike believe that the job market in the United Kingdom for forex professionals is better than ever.
