The City of London Can’t Be Bullied by Brussels
As Colm Kelleher says, Europe’s capital markets aren’t strong enough or deep enough. The EU needs the City as much as the City needs Europe.
Banking on it.
Photographer: Chris Ware/Hulton ArchiveThere hasn’t been much balance in the overheated debate around the post-Brexit trade settlement between Britain and the European Union. So it was a welcome surprise to see former Morgan Stanley President Colm Kelleher describe Europe’s capital markets as “not fit for purpose” recently.
It’s good to see an acknowledgement that maybe the EU doesn’t hold all the cards as the two sides wrangle over how the financial services industry will operate after Britain’s departure. European capital markets are “neither large nor deep enough to support economic growth or to buffer it in hard times,” Kelleher said in a pre-dinner speech reported by the Financial Times.