Westministenders: No Australia Don't Have A Deal

[RedToothBrush]

Since Friday, far from letting things calm down, Johnson has doubled down stating that if we can't have a Canada Deal (which the EU says wouldn't be equal because we are much closer than Canada geographically) we will go for an Australia Deal.

This is the latest rehash of a managed no deal package up as something else which the EU have already repeatedly said no to.

So we are on track for no deal.

At the same time Johnson has got very excited about American food and how its great. Almost as if he wants no deal wit the EU to force a shitty bad deal with the us through.

Johnson and his chronies have also been trying to undermine journalistic transparency by blocking access to the lobby to some media outlets in a move that makes us look like a tinpot dictatorship. Fortunately there was a mass walk out of journalists but it remains to be seen how long that can be maintained.

Far from being a clean slate to move forward from its already proving that nothing has changed and old divisions are as deep as ever, if not worse...

BCF - I don't think the job losses in financial services is fully reported. HSBC - a couple of thousand over the last couple of years - and new positions filled on a contract basis - so if those contracts aren't renewed - well they do count in real terms , but aren't "employees".
UBS - has gradually shrunk its business - several thousand in the last couple of years my BIL worked there.
None of the banks have laid off huge numbers all at once. It's been a gradual attrition.

Those numbers are redundancies- not offers to move overseas.

And then there people like BIL - who negotiated his redundancy and wasn't part of a huge lay off......

I don't think the job losses in financial services is fully reported
UBS - has gradually shrunk its business - several thousand in the last couple of years my BIL worked there.

They are reported - just not with a 'Brexit' label attached:

"April 2017 Swiss bank UBS announced on Tuesday that it will wind down its fixed-income business over the next three years and shed 10,000 bankers.The bank will focus its efforts on its private bank and a smaller investment bank,abandoning much of its trading business that accounted for nearly $50 billion in losses since the financial crisis began.Of the job cuts, 2,000 will be from the front-office investment-banking staff with 2,500 of the total cuts occurring in Zurich and the rest in New York and London."

www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2012/10/30/ubs-to-cut-10-000-jobs

HSBC in the news yesterday:

"HSBC employees are heading for a strategy review which could involve swathes of job cuts."

"The lender is reportedly set to reveal a shake-up later this month, with changes to HSBC's struggling French unit and its business on the west coast of America expected."

"Around 10,000 jobs are thought to be on the line under the shake-up that will affect workers worldwide."

"It comes as a survey of the bank's 237,000 staff, seen by Bloomberg, showed just 38% of employees in Europe, excluding the UK, felt confident about its future under interim boss Noel Quinn."

"In 2018, HSBC announced it may move up to 1,000 jobs from its UK head office in Canary Wharf, London, to Paris over concerns around Brexit, but in April this year said it had put those plans on hold, with less than 100 jobs having moved so far."

www.mirror.co.uk/money/hsbc-poised-announce-10000-job-21472685

I think the main takeaway is that businesses which plan to continue to operate in the U.K. and which want to keep the lines of communication open with government cannot blame Brexit even where Brexit is a major factor.

This is why Brexit tends to be raised particularly by companies which go into administration or which decide to leave the U.K. market (no further need for lobbying).

"in the second half of 2015 alone, the number of announced job losses was 130,000, with culls at HSBC (HSBA.L), Standard Chartered (STAN.L), Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE) and Credit Suisse (CSGN.S) among others" Brexit??

Going back to the HS2 decision - I can't help but think that Johnson has ducked the decision making by letting it go ahead. Much the same as he does with everything else, after all it's only the taxpayers money.

I look forward to what he does over the Heathrow expansion - the man who was going to lie down in front of the diggers.

Clav- the only one you could say is not for the most part is maybe HSBC- who is focusing there business into Asia.
Those I know in banking - and v senior all understand that this is because of brexit.

You can accept that or not. I would presume you won't but that's not really my issue - it's purely yours.

And one of my senior contacts was at the forefront of UBS restructure ......

The HS2 announcement is clear enough. It's going to run as far as Crewe and then stop. Crewe is in Cheshire which is "The North," so there you are.

Yes - peregrina , I agree. He has avoided a decision on HS2..... or a fight. It's so bloody depressing- no leadership whatsoever, tarted up as
Leadership

The £900 billion in assets moved out of the UK by financial firms as of last March is due to Brexit.

Business and assets can sometimes be moved out without impacting much on existing jobs.
However, it does impact e.g. the govt tax take

As with auto manufacturers, some businesses & industries need to restructure,
but
Brexit puts a big target on the UK for cutbacks, when boardrooms are weighing up where to cut

Reading back, I see "why N26 and not other foreign banks ?"

N26 is a German online bank based in Berlin
It operates on very thin margins, with nearly all admin & processing work performed remotely in Berlin

Hence it only has 12 employees in the UK
It's an unusual business model - in fact it's sometimes called a "neobank"

When it decided a couple of years ago to open in the UK,
N26 - like many other businesses - assumed the UK would go for a very soft Brexit deal

They were relying on "financial passporting" that would continue to allow it to use its German licence to operate in the UK.

However, those rights now look v unlikely, so EU banks in the UK would have to:
apply for a UK banking licence, employ a few extra staff in the UK for the brass plate, manage / ring-fence the UK money from the rest of the bank ....

N26 decided this wouldn't work for their business model, so they decided to pull the plug.

In a world competing fiercely for business, Brexit makes firms jump over an extra big hurdle
Not all will be able / wish to do so

Dec 2019

European fintech weekly: N26 lags in the UK
"German unicorn N26 is struggling to lure UK customers"

"Berlin-based digital bank N26 is a big fish.It’s raised a whopping $670m and it has 4.5m users globally. It’s been first off the block in the US, where it’s leading the way. But there currently seems to be a hole in its success story, and that’s in the UK."

"N26 launched its digital bank in the UK last October. But fresh data shows that N26 is far behind its local peers in terms of monthly active users (MAUs) and downloads so far this year."

"Among British fintechs, N26 ranks 19th by MAUs, according to data from iOS and Android users."

"N26’s late arrival in the UK goes some way to explaining its smaller monthly user base. But download data also ranks N26’s app in 16th place for the fintechs; a metric which should forgive a late start and ultimately contradicts its “high-growth” narrative. It also suggests only moderate success for the intensive advertising campaign it ran across UK tube stations earlier this year."

"Overall, leading the charge is Monzo, followed by Revolut and Starling, which recently hit the 1m user mark in the UK."

"either way, N26 has made more of a ripple than a splash [in the UK] so far."

"This might also serve as a warning to other fintechs who are belatedly entering London’s saturated market"

sifted.eu/articles/europe-fintech-n26-lags-curve-bo/

Can’t we just bypass the C&P wordcloud obfuscation and go straight to the actual take-home messages?

Namely:

🔹“Planet not literally being currently devoured in flames by collapsing red giant star 👉 Brexit is a success!”

and

🔹“Look! A squirrel 🐿!”

Yes, clavinova The N26 model has paper thin margins and did not wish to cope with Brexit
No, it is not a big player in the UK

Other foreign businesses, large and small, will all be evaluating what they need to do to stay in the UK after Brexit and whether it is worth it.

I expect many who have previously invested a lot in the UK, will try to stay until at least the future trade deal has been agreed and / or until 2021

Do you think the £900 billion that financial institutions transferred out of the UK since March - because of Brexit - is unimportant ?

Or with the Automotive industry, given that there is already overcapacity in the European market, they are most likely to wait until the production runs of current models are due to expire and then make the decision whether to re-tool for new models.

wrt goods, HMRC have already said that the extra red tape will cost UK business several billions.

Some will be able to swallow this, or put up prices
Others won't, especially smaller ones

Businesses will have to cope with a gap of several years until the Smart Border technology is ready:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/02/11/gove-admits-brexit-smart-trade-border-will-not-available-2025/

Technological fixes to the UK’s post-Brexit trade border will not be available until 2025 at the earliest, the Government has said.

Or with the Automotive industry, given that there is already overcapacity in the European market, they are most likely to wait until the production runs of current models are due to expire and then make the decision whether to re-tool for new models.

Given the UKs ambitions over electric cars, banning sales of ICE cars etc etc, at least 2 decades worth of certainty would be needed about what standards the UK intends to apply. I'm guessing they won't change at all and remained aligned to whatever the EUs are.

Businesses will have to cope with a gap of several years until the Smart Border technology is ready:

You appear to have misspelled "possible". Easy to do when you have a choice between that and "feasible" I guess.

Yep, there is a 4 or 5 -year model cycle for cars, plus mid-cycle enhancements

Car manufacturers who have to cut capacity anyway will consider Brexit and the impact on JIT as an extra burden that no EEA competitor has

Just as when it comes to large-scale manufacturing plants for new tech, like Tesla
and the main R&D - with well paid high tech jobs - usually goes where the plants do

The UK market could support domestic manufacturers and there will be a gap when some firms pull out,
but they will need to have / develop UK supply chains
and not to be dependent on exports to the EU - currently about 80% of UK production is exported

e.g. Nissan may plan to go all out for the UK domestic market and abandon exporting to the EU from there.
They've a huge investment of several billion in the UK and the alternative would be writing it all off

It's always difficult with new technology, if there are two or three options, to know which is the one to go for. Think VHS vs Betamax, Betamax was technically superior, I was told, but more costly. Both consigned to history now, but currently, I-phones vs Android.

I don't know enough about the technology behind electric cars, but at the moment, they are too expensive for my family to consider buying one.

DG I'm reading "2025 at the earliest" and wondering how many years it will be delayed

UK Government IT projects haven't a great track record

They've a huge investment of several billion in the UK and the alternative would be writing it all off

Yes, but these are sunk costs anyway now. If various models are nearing the end of their production run, it could be assumed that the initial start up costs have been recouped. Whether firms will chose to re-invest is taking something of a calculated risk that they will get a return on their investment.

peregrina iirc, VHS just got in first and then nearly all video cassettes of films etc were only produced in VHS

• Betamax was significantly cheaper, with superior features, when they were still battling it out

Fuel cell technology is an alternative that auto firms are still investigating, but not ready yet.

With electric cars, it is building the infrastructure of charge points around the countrythat is the issue
Even in Germany, we are far away from this and most other countries even less so.

Some towns in Germany have local regs that all new properties must be built with charge points for electric vehicles,
but that is only one of many measures needed to create the infrastructure

I don't know if the UK govt has planned for this

Fuel cell technology is an alternative that auto firms are still investigating, but not ready yet.

You can buy a fuel cell car today if you live somewhere with hydrogen refuelling infrastructure and have a spare £60k. Toyota, Hyundai and Honda all have FCEVs available now.

Différence versus Betamax/VHS is that different vehicle electrification strategies are likely to coexist, partly because of technology limitations (range and weight for BEVs, especially in the heavy duty sector), partly because of resource availability, and partly because of other issues (eg carbon intensity of electricity production).

Funny VHS/Betamax just got mentioned in the electric vehicles thread.

Betamax was better than VHS. Quite a bit. However the Japanese were still quite naive in those days and made a fatal error of judgement in thinking that the Great Unwashed Public would automatically flock to the better product as a matter of course.

Fucking idiots.

In the meantime, the VHS consortium (Betamax was exclusively Sony) decided that it would be a waste of time to improve the technology, and instead went around all the Hollywood studios negotiating exclusive deals on releasing content on VHS. Deals that the antediluvian studios pretty much gave away for a song. (Faster horses ....). So when video "recorders" started hitting the shops, the attraction of VHS for the punter was all the movies you could get.

I am sure we all remember that one kid whose parents had a betamax and 2 tapes ? And the ever-shrinking "Betamax" section of our local video rental store ?

So VHS won - despite being technically a poorer offering than Betamax.

Incidentally, Sony never forgot, and decided for the next technology they would own the content first. Which is why the late 80s and 90s saw them buying up Hollywood and the record industry. George Michael, Prince and "slave" era.