Friday, 23 February 2018

Legal limbo looms for banks in Brexit transition tumult

Britain’s 2016 vote to leave the EU prompted banks to call for a “standstill” transition and new trading terms to avoid hasty decisions on moving staff and operations to meet EU regulators’ demands to do so by “Brexit Day” in March 2019.
“There won’t be legal certainty for a while even if they reach political agreement in March,” Oliver Moullin, head of Brexit at the Association for Financial Markets in Europe, said.
That poses a “tricky question” for the banking trade body’s members in deciding how much they can rely on a political deal, which may not become legally watertight until year-end, as the basis for their Brexit planning, Moullin said.
Transition is one part of a divorce deal which will not be formally approved by governments until October or later.
The issue is hotly debated within the British government itself and Prime Minister Theresa May met with senior ministers on Thursday to agree on what sort of future trade deal to ask from Brussels to follow transition.


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