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There are concerns that Brexit threatens London's status as the
financial capital of Europe and that banks are preparing to move
thousands of jobs to the continent to preserve their access to
the EU's single market.
The meeting is one of a regular series with business leaders and
will also be attended by finance minister Philip Hammond and
junior Brexit minister Robin Walker, a spokesman for May said.
A stand-off between Britain and the EU over the future access to
single market for London's vast financial services industry is
shaping up to be one of the key Brexit battlegrounds before
Britain is due to leave the bloc in March 2019.
Britain and the EU will soon begin the much harder task of
defining their future trading relationship, after settling the
broad terms of their divorce settlement last month.
EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier has said there will be no
special deal for one of Britain's most important industries,
which accounts for more than 10 percent of GDP.
But British officials are confident the EU will be flexible,
partly because they say European countries risk damaging their
own economies if they are cut off from London's markets.
Chancellor Philip Hammond and Brexit minister David Davis, who
are visiting Germany, wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung newspaper that giving Britain a good trade deal could
help avert "such a catastrophe" as another financial crisis.
"We must re-double our collective effort to ensure that we do
not put that hard-earned financial stability at risk, by getting
a deal that supports collaboration within the European banking
sector, rather than forcing it to fragment," they said.
Among those due to attend Thursday's meeting are Jes Staley,
chief executive of Barclays, Mark Wilson, chief executive of
insurer Aviva, and Richard Gnodde, chief executive of Goldman
Sachs International, sources familiar with the matter said.
The firms involved declined to comment.
Britain's financial sector employs 2.2 million people and its
executives say the industry deserves to be a priority in the
Brexit negotiations because it is the country's largest exporter
and accounts for about 12 percent of its tax revenues.
But banks and insurers are already enacting contingency plans to
shift parts of their European operations from Britain if Brexit
means the country does not maintain access to the EU single
market.
The Bank of England has said it is plausible that 10,000 jobs
may leave by the time Britain leaves the EU in March 2019.
Consultants such as Oliver Wyman have forecast losses of 75,000
or far higher, although over several years.
(Additional Reporting by Elizabeth Piper and Carolyn Cohn;
Editing by William Schomberg and Alexander Smith)
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