Category: Europe

By Huw Jones and David Milliken

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain will resist “very firmly” any European Union attempts to arm-twist banks into shifting trillions of euros in derivatives clearing from Britain to the bloc after Brexit, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey said on Wednesday.

Europe’s top banks have been asked by the European Commission to justify why they should not have to shift clearing of euro-denominated derivatives from London to the EU, a document seen by Reuters on Tuesday showed.

Clearing is a core part of financial plumbing, ensuring that a stock or bond trade is completed, even if one side of the transaction goes bust.

Britain’s financial services industry, which contributes over 10% of UK taxes, has been largely cut off from the EU, hitherto its biggest export customer, since a Brexit transition period ended on Dec. 31 as the sector is not covered by the UK-EU trade deal.

Trading in EU shares and derivatives has already left Britain for the continent.

The EU is now targetting clearing which is dominated by the London Stock Exchange’s LCH arm to reduce the bloc’s reliance on the City of London financial hub, over which EU rules and supervision no longer apply.

“It would be very controversial in my view, because legislating extra-territorially is controversial anyway and obviously of dubious legality, frankly, …” Bailey told lawmakers in Britain’s parliament on Wednesday.

Some 75% of the 83.5 trillion euros ($101 trillion) in clearing positions at LCH are not held by EU counterparties and the EU should not be targetting them, Bailey said.

“I have to say to you quite bluntly that that would be highly controversial and I have to say that that would be something that we would, I think, have to and want to resist very firmly,” he said.

Brussels has given LCH permission, known as equivalence, to continue clearing euro trades for EU firms until mid-2022, providing time for banks to shift positions from London to the bloc.

The question of equivalence is not about mandating what non-EU market participants must do outside the bloc and the latest efforts by Brussels were about forced relocation of financial activity, Bailey said.

Deutsche Boerse has been offering sweeteners to banks that shift positions from London to its Eurex clearing arm in Frankfurt, but has barely eroded LCH’s market share.

The volume of clearing represented by EU clients at LCH in London would not be very viable on its own inside the bloc as it would mean fragmenting a big pool of derivatives, Bailey said.

“By splitting that pool up the whole process becomes less efficient. To break that down it would increase costs, no question about that,” he said.

Banks have said that by clearing all denominations of derivatives at LCH means they can net across different positions to save on margin, or cash they must post against potential default of trades.

(Reporting by David Milliken and Alistair Smout. Writing by William Schomberg.; Editing by Huw Jones and Mark Potter)

By William Schomberg

LONDON (Reuters) – British finance minister Rishi Sunak will next week promise yet more spending to prop up the economy during what he hopes will be the last phase of lockdown, but he will also probably signal tax rises ahead to plug the huge hole in the public finances.

Sunak, who is due to announce a new budget plan on March 3, has already racked up more than 280 billion pounds ($397 billion) in coronavirus spending and tax cuts, pushing Britain’s borrowing to a peacetime record.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson plans to lift England’s current lockdown entirely only in late June so Sunak is expected to rely heavily on the debt markets again.

His job retention scheme, paying 80% of employees’ wages, will probably be extended beyond a scheduled April 30 expiry date, further inflating its estimated cost of 70 billion pounds. Support for the self-employed looks set to stay too.

Businesses are demanding Sunak keep other lifelines, such as exempting the firms hardest hit by the lockdown from property taxes and giving them a value-added tax cut.

And calls are growing for an extension of a 20 pounds-a-week emergency welfare increase due to expire in April.

The Times newspaper said Sunak would prolong his stamp duty property tax break for three months until the end of June.

Sunak hopes that by then Britain will be emerging from its deep freeze thanks to Europe’s fastest vaccination programme.

Bank of England Chief Economist Andy Haldane likens the economy to a “coiled spring” primed with the savings that households have built up after being stuck at home.

A strong recovery would mean a jump in tax revenues, doing some of the Treasury’s job of fixing the public finances.

Rupert Harrison, an aide to former finance minister George Osborne, said Sunak should not try to slash Britain’s 2.1 trillion-pound debt mountain, equivalent to 98% of GDP – a ratio unthinkable for decades.

Instead he should write new budget rules tied to the cost of debt servicing, which is close to record lows.

“We can safely carry higher levels of debt than before,” Harrison told a webinar organised by Onward, a think-tank.

But the scale of Britain’s borrowing is raising questions about how long Sunak and Johnson can stick to their promises not to raise key taxes, made to voters before the 2019 election.

BROKEN PROMISES?

The huge costs of tackling the worst of the coronavirus pandemic are likely to ease in the months ahead, meaning this year’s 400 billion pound budget deficit should narrow.

But Britain is probably on course to be stuck with a gap of 60 billion pounds between revenues and day-to-day spending by the mid-2020s, the Institute for Fiscal Studies think-tank says.

In a nod to that, Sunak is expected to start raising Britain’s low corporation tax rate.

The Sunday Times said the rate would rise steadily to bring in an extra 12 billion pounds a year by the time of the next election, due in 2024.

Other options include ending a freeze on fuel duty increases which has been in place since 2012 and looks at odds with Britain’s plans to be carbon net zero by 2050.

But higher fuel prices now would hurt the haulage industry, already struggling with Brexit-related disruption, and could alienate working-class voters who backed Johnson in 2019.

Higher capital gains tax or lower pension incentives would anger lawmakers in Johnson’s Conservative Party.

David Gauke, a former deputy finance minister, said the only big revenue-raising options were the ones that Johnson has promised not to touch – income tax, VAT and national insurance contributions.

“In the end, they are going to have to say, sorry we just can’t responsibly maintain that manifesto commitment,” Gauke told the Onward webinar.

($1 = 0.7046 pounds)

(Writing by William Schomberg; Editing by Catherine Evans)