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Big banks to stay as £500m investment committed to financial services in wake of Brexit

Two major banks have delivered a boost to London’s jittery financial services sector by committing to retain their headquarters in the capital despite the Brexit vote.

HSBC Chairman Douglas Flint told an audience at a City event on Thursday that the bank had no plans to move its headquarters to another European capital, and backed a recent 10 month review by the bank into where its HQ should be located which settled on London.

Speaking about the review and its considerations, he told the audience: “We said at the time we made the decision that we’d taken that into consideration and that in the event of this outcome we would not call for that to be revisited.”

In related news, Barclays Chief Executive Officer Jes Staley told the BBC that the global bank has no intention of moving any of its UK roles elsewhere in the European Union.

Confirming the financial institution’s desire to remain ‘anchored in Great Britain’, he did warn that the bank may need to increase its presence in other cities but that did not necessarily mean it had to decrease its presence in the City.

He added: “Right now we are not making any plans to pick up and move people from one location to another.”

Fears over London’s financial services sector have swirled since last week’s surprise EU referendum decision, as question marks have been raised over the banking sector’s continued access to the European single market were the UK to drop out of the EU.

However, in more positive developments today, consultant firm PwC has said that over 20 startup banks and investment firms are still to press ahead with plans to invest almost half a billion pounds in the UK’s financial services sector.

The firms, a mixture of UK, EU and non-EU, have already committed £200m and have plans for a further £300m in their business plans

Stephen Morse, financial services partner at PwC, said: “There are a range of new technology-enabled banks, fintech businesses, commercial banks and even niche investment banks who have identified gaps in the market in part caused by big global banks having pulled out of some businesses over the past few years.”

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