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TOPLINE: Anecdotal evidence given to IBTimes UK suggests the country's banks are looking to hire more employees in London.

SUMMARY: Leading Swiss Banks including the big two – UBS and Credit Suisse – and boutique private banks such as Julius Baer and Pictet, are actually looking to renew their operational focus and hire employees regardless, and not cut their headcount in London, according to anecdotal evidence given to IBTimes UK in Zurich, Switzerland's leading financial hub.

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TOPLINE: The UK regulator has warned that its financial services firms will start taking irreversible decisions on the location of operations and staff in the next couple of months, if the UK and EU fail to agree a transition deal as part of Brexit negotiations.

SUMMARY: Andrew Bailey, chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), said UK companies will start making firm Brexit contingency plans at the end of this year and into the beginning of 2018. 

Speaking to a Treasury Select Committee, Mr Bailey said: “We tend to take the view that the end of this year, beginning of next year, is the point at which these things start happening.” He added that financial services need a firm commitment to a transition deal.

According to a report from the BBC, the Bank of England (BoE) believes 75,000 financial sector jobs could be lost when the UK leaves the European Union.

The BBC reports that the exact number will depend on the trading deal between the EU and UK, and in particular the position of financial services post-Brexit.

Banks and other major financial institutions have been asked to provide the BoE with contingency plans, should the two sides fail to reach a deal and the UK reverts to World Trade Organization (WTO) rules. Under WTO trading rules, UK financial services firms would lose EU passporting rights unless they have set up an EU-registered company.

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TOPLINE: Sam Woods, told a House of Lords select committee that having a bilateral agreement within the withdrawal bill was the central bank’s preferred option to ensure derivative contracts and insurance policies can still be serviced.

SUMMARY: UK banks hold around £20tn worth of notional derivatives contracts with a cross-border EU element, or around one-fifth of their overall holdings, Mr Woods said, with European banks holding roughly the same amount with UK entities.

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On Tuesday 24 October pro-European activists descended on Westminster to make the case for continued membership of the European Union as the EU (Withdrawal) Bill returns to the House of Commons.

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The European Movement UK ran a day of action on Saturday 14 October highlighting the threats Brexit poses to the NHS in 13 different locations across the UK from Macclesfield to Southsea. 

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TOPLINE: The NHS is not prepared for the drop in staffing supply from the EU and faces a significant reduction in capacity regardless of deal the Government reaches in its Brexit negotiations.

SUMMARY: There are pre-exisiting and longstanding issues regarding nurses numbers and pay within the NHS which aren't been solved quickly enough. This crisis has become more acute since the decision to leave the EU. Half of Nurses already don't believe they have enough staff to perform their jobs effectively, and 3,500 EU nurses left the NHS in 2016 - double the figure of the previous year.

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TOPLINE

The Government and Department for Health must produce an assessment of the contingency planning needed for Brexit - although it currently may not have the capacity to do so.

SUMMARY

The Committee has created a comprehensive assessment of the impact Brexit could have on the workforce of the healthcare sector. It has also taken into consideration the work undertaken so far by the Government and more specifically the Department for health, and concluded that whilst they may have undertaken some preliminary work in assessing the potential issues the NHS will face after Brexit, they will need to become much more forensic in their work if they are to properly prepare for the multiple possible scenarios in post-Brexit Britain. The capacity of the relevant departments to do so has found to be lacking, and it is recommended that they bulk up significantly in the coming months.

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Pro-European campaigners descended on Manchester yesterday for a day of action against the government's plans to exit the European Union, as the Conservative Party conference got underway.

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