Image: Shutterstock
Since the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, there has been a lot of uncertainty in the private sector. And while Europeans in general didn’t want to see the UK leave, it could end up working out for some of them. Almost as soon as the polls closed, business and economic leaders across the Continent started to move toward attracting business away from London and to other cities like Paris or Vilnius.
The logic is simple: with the UK out of the EU, companies with business in the EU will want offices in other countries, where they can more easily take advantage of that union’s resources. And it would be a huge benefit for those cities to get any of London’s business. The capital of Britain has long been an economic powerhouse, being a center of trade for over a millennia now, and at the forefront of finance since the idea first started to arise. As such, it commands a huge amount of economic power, and is home to many wealthy companies.
That isn’t likely to change, but even if some companies sent some jobs to the Continent, it would help. For example, Frankfurt could steal just 2% of London’s business, translating that to a 20% bump for the German city. European cities could reap huge benefits without London having to take significant losses.
But the results of Brexit are still up in the air, and while a slight majority of Britons voted to leave, that process will take a while, and the terms are nowhere near hashed out yet. How exactly the process unfolds, and what kind of connections the UK and the EU keep in place will have a huge impact on how business is done in Europe.