HSBC to keep headquarters in London despite Brexit

HSBC completed a 10-month review into whether to move its base away from London in February

Hazel Sheffield @hazelsheffield

Thursday 30 June 2016 13:30

HSBC chairman Douglas Flint says the ‘best answer’ for the bank is for the UK to stay in a reformed EU

(AFP)

HSBC has confirmed that it will keep its headquarters in London despite the shock decision for the UK to leave the EU.

Douglas Flint, chairman, told City executives gathered at a conference in London that HSBC would stick to its plan to keep its headquarters in the UK.

HSBC completed a 10-month review into whether to move its base away from London in February, with New York or Hong Kong thought to be likely alternatives.

The outcome of that review was that HSBC should stay put in London even though two-thirds of its profits are generated in Asia. Mr Flint confirmed that the referendum outcome would not trigger another review.

“We said at the time we made the decision that we’d taken that [a Brexit] into consideration and that in the event of this outcome we would not call for that to be revisited," he said.

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Before the vote, Stuart Gulliver, HSBC’s chief executive, said that Brexit could see 20 per cent of its 5,000 London investment bankers moved out of London to Paris, or a total of 1,000 staff.

But Mr Flint sought to reassure investors of HSBC's commitment to them in the aftermath of the vote.

6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you

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1/66 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you

6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you

More expensive foreign holidays

The first practical effect of a vote to Leave is that the pound will be worth less abroad, meaning foreign holidays will cost us more

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6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you

No immediate change in immigration status

The Prime Minister will have to address other immediate concerns. He is likely to reassure nationals of other EU countries living in the UK that their status is unchanged. That is what the Leave campaign has said, so, even after the Brexit negotiations are complete, those who are already in the UK would be allowed to stay

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6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you

Higher inflation

A lower pound means that imports would become more expensive. This is likely to mean the return of inflation – a phenomenon with which many of us are unfamiliar because prices have been stable for so long, rising at no more than about 2 per cent a year. The effect may probably not be particularly noticeable in the first few months. At first price rises would be confined to imported goods – food and clothes being the most obvious – but inflation has a tendency to spread and to gain its own momentum

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6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you

Interest rates might rise

The trouble with inflation is that the Bank of England has a legal obligation to keep it as close to 2 per cent a year as possible. If a fall in the pound threatens to push prices up faster than this, the Bank will raise interest rates. This acts against inflation in three ways. First, it makes the pound more attractive, because deposits in pounds will earn higher interest. Second, it reduces demand by putting up the cost of borrowing, and especially by taking larger mortgage payments out of the economy. Third, it makes it more expensive for businesses to borrow to expand output

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6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you

Did somebody say recession?

Mr Carney, the Treasury and a range of international economists have warned about this. Many Leave voters appear not to have believed them, or to think that they are exaggerating small, long-term effects. But there is no doubt that the Leave vote is a negative shock to the economy. This is because it changes expectations about the economy’s future performance. Even though Britain is not actually be leaving the EU for at least two years, companies and investors will start to move money out of Britain, or to scale back plans for expansion, because they are less confident about what would happen after 2018

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6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you

And we wouldn’t even get our money back

All this will be happening while the Prime Minister, whoever he or she is, is negotiating the terms of our future access to the EU single market. In the meantime, our trade with the EU would be unaffected, except that companies elsewhere in the EU may be less interested in buying from us or selling to us, expecting tariff barriers to go up in two years’ time. Whoever the Chancellor is, he or she may feel the need to bring in a new Budget

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He said on Friday: "The work to establish fresh terms of trade with our European and global partners will be complex and time consuming.

"We will be working tirelessly in the coming weeks and months to help our customers adjust to and prepare for the new environment."

UK banks fear they may lose passporting, or the ability to do business with the whole of the EU.

Banks are discussing whether they will need to move European headquarters to the continent to keep the same privileges.

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