Bankers fleeing London after Brexit can expect a big pay cut wherever they go

Reuters/Russell Boyce

• New data from Emolument shows that bankers leaving London after Brexit can expect to see their salaries shrink.
• “If London banks were to move their workforce to other European cities, average compensation packages would decrease,” Emolument said.
• The average analyst moving from London to Paris would take a pay cut of more than £10,000.
• Banks are making plans to shift staff out of the UK as a result of the expected loss of Britain’s so-called financial passport.

LONDON — Bankers leaving London to work in EU financial centres like Frankfurt and Paris after Brexit can expect to see their pay packets shrink significantly, according to new data from salary benchmarking site Emolument.

Emolument’s data shows that bankers at all levels of seniority and across disciplines moving out of London would see both their base salaries and end of year bonuses diminish in all three of Europe’s other major financial centres — Paris, Frankfurt, and Milan.

“If London banks were to move their workforce to other European cities, average compensation packages would decrease. From Analyst to MD, London offers the highest salaries and bonuses in the market,” Emolument said on Friday.

Emolument’s data suggests that an average analyst — the lowest rung on the banking ladder — can expect to earn a basic salary of £57,000 and a bonus of £9,600 in London. By contrast, in Paris a banker of the same seniority generally earns a salary of £48,000, topped up by a bonus of £7,400.

At more senior levels of the banking world, the disparities are more stark, with London based managing directors getting total remuneration of more than £475,000, compared to MDs in Milan, who earn about £330,000 on average. MDs in Paris earn just over £300,000, while those in Frankfurt earn just under.

The chart below shows compensation levels across the four cities at different rungs of the banking ladder:

Emolument

“As regards moving away from London to other EU capitals, while pay may be lower, pain points such as schooling and generally higher quality of life should compensate bankers transferring to the continent,” Alice Leguay, Emolument’s cofounder and CMO said in a statement.

Major banks are currently making plans to shift staff out of the UK as a result of the expected loss of Britain’s so-called financial passport.

The passport is effectively a set of rules and regulations that allow UK based financial firms to access customers and carry out activities across Europe. Many non-EU lenders use the passport to operate a hub in the UK and then sell services across the 28-nation bloc.

Once Britain leaves the EU, however, it is almost certain to lose passporting rights, which are tied strongly to membership of the single market, a marketplace the UK intends to leave as part of Brexit. This means that to continue providing clients with comprehensive services across the EU after Brexit, many lenders will need new branches.

So far, Frankfurt is the chosen destination for banks, with Goldman Sachs, Citi, and Morgan Stanley all believed to be making plans to move staff to the German city.