New London

[Josquius]

There's a bunch of articles discussing this. It has been predicted since before the ref and is looking ever more likely.
With britain no longer half in and half out of the eu businesses will have to look elsewhere for their European operations.
Where will this be?

[Richard Hakluyt]

London.

[Legbiter]

Yes, London. Frankfurt is small and boring and Paris is unfriendly. The markets seem to have reckoned Brexit will take at least 2 years and that's plenty of time to make adjustments. Life goes on.

[Josquius]

Come on.
It's a theoretical based on the worst possible outcome of Brexit.  This is being heavily discussed at high levels. It's a virtual certainty that a lot of jobs are moving at least

Yes, London. Frankfurt is small and boring and Paris is unfriendly. The markets seem to have reckoned Brexit will take at least 2 years and that's plenty of time to make adjustments. Life goes on.

Adjustments to where though?

[Duque de Bragança]

London can live with oligarch, dictator and Dar al-Islam money. Some Euro clearing activity will move to Frankfurt though.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I'm not saying that London won't lose some business, but that list of cities does not have a potential London replacement in it.

[Duque de Bragança]

Frankfurt is indeed small and rapidly gentrifying which is even worse. Prices are still way cheaper than London but I don't think that's a problem either way for those bankers. OTOH, life quality is better in Frankfurt. Crossrail exists there since the '70s, again not very important for high finance.
Of course, this being Germany, forget about original versions if those bankers are into cinema. They would have to like going to arthouses. Much less port in the local taverns for the old gentlemen too.

Paris could compete in theory, but the local mayor is too busy making it a perfectly bobo-zone by eliminating the remnants of Gallic proletariat or even (low) middle-class in the city centre.

[Sheilbh]

London.

Euro-denominated trading will move to Europe. Wholesale and clearing in Euros will too. My bet is on Dublin to pick it up.

But I think there's enough other stuff in London and such an agglomeration of skills to make a financial centre that it'll still be the biggest in Europe, if not dominant in Europe.

[The Minsky Moment]

They are lucky they still have the submarine base.  Maybe Greenwich gets some more hedge funds but I don't think New London has a shot.

[MadImmortalMan]

London has never been the place where outside businesses set up shop so they could be in the EU. British taxes are too high.

Now, if Ireland had done this, the effect on Dublin would be severe. London's base is its own.

[The Minsky Moment]

London has never been the place where outside businesses set up shop so they could be in the EU.

It very much is these days for tech.  Lots of unicorns in London and also some scattered across that southern-SE corridor.

[Sheilbh]

Of course there's a question of how much they'll move to eg Berlin or Frankfurt or Stockholm, because my understanding of London's tech scene is that a lot of it is FinTech. So again there may be an agglomeration effect. How many places can replicate the density of tech and financial services people?

That may be nonsense though.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I think that the cultural effects will be very important in the long run. Both the City and tech need people from all over the place to do well. And those people like to live in "cool" places not monocultural backwaters. I can imagine a kind of offshore Britain with masses of immigration that could do well outside the EU, but that runs directly counter to what many (most?) of the brexiteers wanted.

[The Minsky Moment]

Shazam is the one I'm most personally familiar with  . . .
Also I would question the agglomeration synergy benefits of Fintech and Finance.  Lots of the US fintech companies are outside NY

[OttoVonBismarck]

I agree with the FT analysis that of the business that leaves London it'll get scattered, some to Frankfurt, some to Paris, some to Dublin, some to Warsaw. There won't be a new European financial center.

As for technology, I think Ireland is seen as being pretty friendly to tech companies, and there's usually noise in the Baltics and such in terms of tech, some small tech centers in Germany. I think a lot of European countries have cultures and labor practices that are simply incompatible with any kind of European version of Silicon Valley (France as one example, or Italy.) I think the UK will remain an important country for tech just for cultural/regulatory reasons.