Britain’s finance sector rebounds after Brexit, but London’s global clout fades

Brexit did not hollow out London’s financial district, but it did leave the City smaller in global terms. A decade after the referendum, banks are still hiring, profits are strong and JPMorgan Chase is planning a Canary Wharf tower that could house up to 12,000 employees. Yet the shift in Europe’s financial map is unmistakable: business moved to Paris, Dublin, Milan and Amsterdam, and Britain’s grip on international finance has loosened.

JPMorgan’s planned tower is the clearest sign that global lenders still see London as a core market. The bank says the project could create about 7,800 jobs and contribute about £9.9 billion to the local economy over six years, including construction costs. Finance minister Rachel Reeves has treated the development as a multi-billion-pound vote of confidence in the capital, even as Brexit-era warnings about a collapse in City employment proved exaggerated.

The City of London itself has recovered strongly since the pandemic. Official figures show 676,000 workers in the Square Mile in 2024, more than 25% above pre-pandemic 2019 levels. That helps explain why many executives still describe London as a thriving business hub, with employment near an all-time high and banks posting robust profits.

But the balance sheet is not all on one side. The City of London Corporation estimates that about 40,000 jobs relocated to European hubs after Britain lost EU passporting rights. Michael Mainelli, the former Lord Mayor of London, said Dublin alone gained about 10,000 positions, while Paris, Milan and Amsterdam also benefited as firms shifted work out of Britain. Jamie Dimon’s early warning that as many as 4,000 jobs could move out of Britain captured the anxiety of 2016, but the longer-term outcome was not collapse, it was diffusion.

The damage is clearest in relative terms. Britain remains second only to the United States as a destination for foreign capital, and Barclays research citing IMF data says the UK hosted more than £12 trillion in foreign direct investment, portfolio investment and cross-border deposits at the end of 2025. Even so, Britain’s share of global foreign capital fell from 8.6% in 2015 to 7% in 2025, while the U.S. share rose to 25%.

New Financial data show the broader erosion. Britain has lost market share in 10 of 12 categories of international finance, including foreign exchange trading, stock offerings and assets under management. Barclays argues that the shift reflects intensifying global competition and faster-growing markets elsewhere, not simply a collapse in British competitiveness. That is the verdict on Brexit’s financial legacy: London survived, but its old gravitational pull did not.