Britain’s financial services industry is worth £176 billion to the UK economy and has a £72 billion surplus. Who needs Europe’s delinquency?
Britain’s financial services industry is responsible for £176 billion in revenues to the British economy and has a trade surplus of £72 billion. Without the shackles of the defaulting, old fashioned and desolate EU economy, Britain’s position is secured
For over forty years, Britain, and in particular London, has been rather similar to a glowing child prodigy from a good family with skills and abilities beyond his size and age, who is stuck in a sink comprehensive school surrounded by 28 delinquents who do not wish to learn and will not behave.
Those days are now coming to an end, and Britain is about to leave the delinquent majority of its peers behind as it has gained the equivalent of said child escaping the lowest common denominatorship of the sink comprehensive in the form of a scholarship to a top quality private school, freed from the burdens of those wanting to hold him back, and given all of the tools to maximize his intelligence and skills.
Britain’s exit from the European Union can be viewed this way, and in order to exemplify this from the perspective of the financial services industry in the UK, which hosts all of the world’s major Tier 1 banks which nestle on the shores of the East India Docks at Canary Wharf, handling 49% of all global FX order flow, accompanied by ECNs FXall and Currenex on Bank Street, and just down the road in the Square Mile by all of the traditional investment banks, institutional liquidity providers which power the world’s electronic trading industry and some of the world’s largest retail FX and CFD companies with their own in house trading environments.
Technologically advanced Great Britain is one of the only nations in the world whose financial technology and financial services industries have been interlinked for over 30 years, and whose workforce, whether salespeople, programmers or senior corporate executives, are dedicated and highly experienced.
Britain’s financial services industry employs only 0.0009% of the entire adult population of the European Union, yet produces 16.7% of all tax receipts to Brussels. Now that’s productivity.
As Britain finalizes its exit from the ball and chain around its ankle, the vast abyss which contributes nothing to the advancement of Britain’s economy and does not participate at all in London’s financial services sector – quite the contrary actually considering that ailing Deutsche Bank does its electronic trading from London whilst its faltering and ill-managed banking arm flounders in Frankfurt – reports are now emerging to demonstrate exactly how much of a producer London’s financial services sector is.
Employing just 2.2 million people across Britain, the financial services sector contributes £176 billion to Britain’s already huge economy.
That is quite remarkable.
On a granular level, things are even more remarkable. Hargreaves Lansdown, Britain’s largest retail financial services company, has a market capitalization of £6.5 billion, is based in Bristol and is led by former IG Group CFO Christopher Hill, who is CEO of Hargreaves Lansdown.
The company’s proprietary Vantage system allows retail investors to manage all of their portfolios from one platform, a far cry from Hargreaves Lansdown’s initial years as a Clifton-based independent financial adviser and insurance brokerage.
It is corporate powerhouses such as this, along with their rock solid reputations for quality, that are the flagship of the British financial services sector.
Although the domestic market is one of massive importance to British companies which have a long history of serving clients who are very loyal, the financial sector is Britain’s largest exporter, with a trade surplus of £72 billion.
This is another case in point. The export of financial services on an industrial scale represents the relationships between Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, North America, Australia, Canada and mainland China, not the European Union’s desolate financial environment.
In summary, as far as a holistic approach to the financial sector, from the Tier 1 banks right through to prime brokerage, platform development, market infrastructure, liquidity and connectivity, nobody does it better, hence Britain’s future as an independent beacon of financial services prowess is a very bright one indeed.
Image: Clifton Suspension Bridge, built by great engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, in Bristol, England, home to Hargreaves Lansdown, the largest financial services company in the country
