EU referendum: Morgan Stanley and Citi UK bosses issue stark warnings over Brexit
The City could face severe backlash in the event of a so-called Brexit, senior investment bankers at Morgan Stanley and Citi have warned.
“If Britain were to leave Europe you would see a significant backlash against London as a financial centre,” Morgan Stanley International chief executive Colm Kelleher said yesterday.
Citi’s UK country officer James Bardrick, meanwhile, said that adjusting to Britain being outside of the European Union would be “enormously costly and inefficient”.
“We would have to operationally change the business and reallocate certain businesses back into the EU,” Bardrick said.
“That’s not technically impossible,” he added, but called the changes “enormously costly and enormously inefficient” and said it would “mean the scale of our activities here will reduce”.
Kelleher and Bardrick were speaking at the FT Banking Summit in London.
Analysts at Morgan Stanley published a separate research note today saying there is a one in three chance of the UK voting to leave the EU in the autumn of next year.
Prime Minister David Cameron has promised an in/out referendum on the UK’s EU membership by the end of 2017, but has yet to set a date.
The Morgan Stanley analysts also warned of a post-Brexit “referendum shock” leading to a fall in investment and weaker consumption slowing growth in 2017 to 1 per cent.