Goldman Sachs is preparing plans to move around 2,000 British jobs overseas if the UK loses its financial passporting rights after Brexit, according to the Sunday Times.
The newspaper cites an unnamed City sources as saying that the investment bank is looking at moving a third of its 6,000 strong UK workforce to mainland Europe in the event of a “Hard Brexit.”
A spokesperson for Goldman Sachs told Business Insider:
“We continue to work through all possible implications of the Brexit vote. There remain numerous uncertainties as to what the Brexit negotiations will yield in terms of an operating framework for the banking industry. As a result, we have not taken any decisions as to what our eventual response will be, despite media speculation to the contrary.”
“Hard Brexit” is the term used to describe the UK cutting off all relations with Europe and prioritising control over immigration, as opposed to maintaining some economic links in return for concessions on freedom of movement.
One of the things that would be lost in a “Hard Brexit” would be passporting rights, which allow financial firms to operate across the EU using their local licence rather than apply to be regulated in each new market.
The loss of passporting rights would be devastating to the City of London. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said earlier this year that 5,500 UK companies rely on passporting rights, with a combined turnover of £9 billion.
JPMorgan and UBS have both already publically stated that they will have to relocate part of their British workforce in the event of a "Hard Brexit" and Deutsche Bank has prepared an internal document, obtained by Business Insider, showing where they think investment banks will likely relocate jobs to after Brexit.
Goldman said in a recent regulatory filing in the US that the Brexit vote "may adversely affect the manner in which we operate certain of our businesses in the European Union and could require us to restructure certain of our operations."