Australia is the latest country whose banks are planning to abandon London as Brexit looms

pulse

October 29, 2018 10:46 AM

Australia's largest bank, Commonwealth Bank of Australia is moving 50 staff to Amsterdam as it readies for Brexit.

Australia's banks are beginning to put in motion plans to shift staff and other assets out of London after Brexit.
Australia's largest bank by assets, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, is planning to base 50 staff in the Dutch capital, Amsterdam.
Others including Macquarie, Westpac, and ANZ Bank are making plans on the continent.
Many foreign financial institutions are frustrated — like many UK businesses — by the lack of any real clarity over what sort of Brexit the UK will actually achieve when the Article 50 period runs out in March next year.

Australian banks with UK operations are beginning to put in motion plans to increase their presence in European financial centres outside the UK as the possibility of a no-deal Brexit looms large in their thoughts.

Australia's largest bank by assets, Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), has set in motion plans to base around 50 staff in the Dutch capital, Amsterdam, and has applied for a banking licence in the country.

Those staff will be focused on the bank's European "passporting" operations — the system by which banks are able to operate across EU borders while possessing just a single banking licence. The financial passport is linked strongly to membership of the European Single Market, and the UK will lose its passporting rights as a result.

Australian lenders are not alone in their desire for clarity. While most of the attention around post-Brexit job relocations out of the City has focused on American and European lenders, banks from around the world using London as a hub for their EU business have been made to decide what to do post Brexit, with Japanese banks particularly active in moving staff out of the UK.

Sumitomo Mitsui, MUFJ, Daiwa Securities, and Nomura are among the Japanese banks with plans in motion to shift some of their staff and physical operations out of the UK, generally to Frankfurt, after Brexit.

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