Marcus Ashworth, Columnist

UK Squabbling Over Revolut Helps No One

Rachel Reeves is right to force the issue of the fintech firm's banking license with Andrew Bailey.

August 1, 2025 at 4:00 AM UTC

Marcus Ashworth is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering European markets. Previously, he was chief markets strategist for Haitong Securities in London.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves at the Mansion House Financial Services dinner on July 15, with Andrew Bailey at the head table. — Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves at the Mansion House Financial Services dinner on July 15, with Andrew Bailey at the head table.
Photographer: Carl Court/Getty Images Europe

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Fresh off a losing battle with the left wing of her own party over spending cuts, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves has run into a pillar of the establishment, central bank chief Andrew Bailey. He’s annoyed that she’s trespassing on his turf in an effort to support fintech Revolut Ltd.

Bailey intervened to cancel a meeting Reeves had called between the Bank of England regulators and Revolut to clear the way for it get a banking license, the Financial Times reported this week. The mercurial fintech is the UK's biggest unicorn with 11 million UK customers and 10,000 employees and is straining at the leash after a three-year wait to become a fully regulated bank.