JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley call for transition period to protect banks post-Brexit
Two senior staffers of major investment banks have today called on the UK to secure a transition period for industry post-Brexit.
Speaking at a British Bankers' Association conference, Sir Win Bischoff, chairman of JP Morgan Securities, remarked it would be "advantageous to have a transition period beyond the two-year period" the UK would have before it left the EU after the triggering of Article 50.
He noted that such provisions would be "important not just for the UK, but also for the EU".
Robert Rooney, chief executive of Morgan Stanley International, agreed with Bischoff that a transitional period was something he would like to see UK government take very seriously while arranging the Brexit deal.
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A transitional period could extend valuable rights, such as the much prized passporting regime, to the financial services sector for a longer period of time, giving institutions enough time to make sure they could keep serving customers under whatever new rules the Brexit deal handed them.
Recently published Financial Conduct Authority figures showed that over 13,000 firms currently use passporting, with slightly more than 8,000 of those firms being based elsewhere in the EEA and using the rights to conduct business within the UK.