Boerse Berlin boss: There are ways to overcome Brexit passporting loss
The boss of the Berlin stock exchange said today that a hard Brexit would not be all bad, and there were ways to cope with the much-discussed loss of passporting for the City.
He did though add that Germany has been preparing for a hard Brexit and a UK firm wanting to promote its services in the EU will need a strong presence there.
Passporting currently allows financial services firms which are authorised in the UK to operate throughout the European Economic Area. It has been a hot topic in Brexit discussions involving financial services, with some saying the loss of such provisions could be trouble for the City.
Today, Boerse Berlin chief executive Artur Fischer told BBC 5 live's Wake Up to Money: "In Germany, we have now been told by the regulator to prepare for what you guys probably call a 'hard Brexit', which would mean the UK will become a third country."
Read more: May says UK will ditch passporting because it makes the City a "rule-taker"
"It sounds bad, but when you look at it, it's not totally bad," he added.
The implication is, and we did a number of studies on it, that we would treat the UK like the US for example. and we are doing lots of business with the US, so there are ways to overcome what we call the loss of the passport.
He said for the UK, as long as customers want to come there, any firm coming to the capital asking for financial services will continue to do so, "as the EU has nothing to say about that".
Strong EU presence needed for London firms
However, if a firm is based in London or the UK more widely and wants to promote its services in the EU they need a licence.
"Since this licence is going away, they need to have a presence in the EU," Fischer said.
He added that the European regulator, the European Securities and Markets Authority or ESMA, had published a number of papers on this, saying there to be "a real operation in the EU, which means real control, real management, real people, real processing" have to be there to sell services to the EU people.
Brexit hit for Boerse Berlin "obviously disturbing"
Fischer said on preparations for hard Brexit, analysis had been taken to see how much of Boerse Berlin's business would be affected, which was "obviously disturbing".
He said the impact was "not negligible let's say" and would have to be worked at hard in order to compensate for it.
"But do we have a choice? No, we don't, therefore we'll take all the necessary steps to overcome that problem," he added.
Job losses from London lower than previous forecasts
As for potential job moves out of London, Fischer said he was "more conservative on that", and he thought there would be some "but not on the magnitude some people have assumed there will be".
He put an estimate in the thousands, as opposed to tens or hundreds of thousands.
Fischer said:
At the end of the day the UK and the EU will do the same business, just in a different way.
Read more: No special Brexit deal for the City of London, says Michel Barnier
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