JP Morgan boss warns quarter of UK staff will have to move abroad after ‘hard Brexit’

The chief executive of JP Morgan has admitted that the US investment bank could be compelled to shift more than 4,000 of its UK-based staff abroad if Britain crashes out of the European Union in a so-called ‘hard Brexit’ scenario.

Jamie Dimon issued the warning at the Davos World Economic Forum summit yesterday as Bank of England Governor Mark Carney also revealed to delegates that Brexit has already cost the UK more than £200 million per week in lost economic growth.

According to reports coming from the summit in the Swiss mountain resort, Mr Carney told a private meeting with business leaders that the UK had lost around £10 billion a year in lower growth since the June 2016 referendum.

Meanwhile, Mr Dimon upped previous estimates for the number of personnel that JP Morgan might be forced to relocate.

In the short term, the bank has said it is set to relocate between 500 and 1,000 jobs after Britain’s formal exit from the EU, scheduled for March 29, 2019.

However Dimon told BBC radio: “If we can’t find reciprocal recognition of rules – and there are a lot of people who are mad with the Brits for leaving and want their pound of flesh – then it could be bad. It could be more than 4,000.”

Such a figure would constitute more than one in four of JP Morgan’s near-16,000 head- count in the UK.

The comments mark a return to what Dimon had originally projected in the wake of the Brexit vote in 2016 when he said he expected that about 4,000 jobs could leave the UK, but JP Morgan rowed back on that that figure, saying it expected to move between 500 and 1,000 staff to cities including Frankfurt, Dublin and Luxembourg in order to safeguard its EU business.