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UK Scrambles to Secure Financial Services' Future After Brexit

Non-inclusion of the financial services sector in the future Brexit deal could spell disaster for one of the UK’s economic mainstays, media reports have warned.
Sputnik

During their trip to Berlin on Wednesday, Britain’s finance minister Philip Hammond and Brexit secretary David Davis will ask German business leaders to help change the EU’s implacable opposition to the UK’s financial services being included in the Brexit deal, the Guardian wrote.

Hammond and Davis argue that maintaining a continued integrated approach to banking after the UK leaves the bloc would help to avoid a repeat of the 2008 financial meltdown and the Eurozone crisis that followed.

“The 2008 global financial crisis proved how fundamental financial services are to the real economy, and how easily contagion can spread from one economy to another without global and regional safeguards in place,” Hammond and Davis said in an article published in a German newspaper on Wednesday.

They added that London was looking for a deal that “supports collaboration within the European banking sector, rather than forcing it to fragment.”

UK Members of EU Parliament Warn Theresa May Against Single Market Withdrawal
A few weeks ago Brussels warned that the City of London would not be included in the Brexit deal if London keeps insisting on leaving the European single market.

In November and December of last year, the EU notified 15 European industries, from airlines to mineral water producers, to brace themselves for regulatory havoc in March if Britain exits the bloc without a deal.

A Brexit deal excluding services could be catastrophic for the City of London, which is the financial capital of Europe and operates all across the European Union, the Guardian warned.

The UK’s decision to leave the EU has already rattled the country’s financial sector resulting in thousands of jobs being moved to Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, France and the Republic of Ireland.

READ MORE: Brexit Tax May-hem: UK Firms Could Be Obliged to Pay Upfront for VAT on EU Goods

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