Brexit must be agreed by end of year to avoid new financial crisis led by France & Germany

France and Germany risk starting a new financial crisis if they try to use Brexit to dismantle the London-based heart of the global economy “just to make a political point,” one of the City’s most senior figures has warned.

Xavier Rolet, chief executive of the London Stock Exchange Group, says European leaders who demanded tighter global regulation after the 2008 financial crisis are now threatening to “fragment” those same standards to punish Britain for Brexit.

Writing in today’s Daily Telegraph, Mr Rolet calls on the Bank of England and regulatory bodies in Europe to speed up talks on regulation to ensure that the carefully constructed system of global regulation developed to stop unexpected risks emerging does not collapse.

He calls for an “update” on the progress of these talks to reassure international financial firms.

SMEs however believe Brexit will hinder companies looking to enter new markets with over have surveyed recently saying it will hinder not help them. Yet significantly, businesses planning to enter new markets in the next two years are prioritising new domestic markets within the UK and new markets outside the EU over expansion in EU markets.

Of the SMEs that believe Brexit will negatively affect businesses entering new markets, 85% cite political uncertainty as a worry, 71 per cent believe the number of export markets will be restricted, while 67 per cent are concerned that their choice of workforce will be reduced. However, for businesses which see Brexit providing expansion opportunities, 87 per cent believe it will open up new markets to trade with and 46 per cent feel that it will reduce export regulations.