JPMorgan Could Move more than 4,000 Jobs if Brexit Goes Bad

JPMorgan could still move more than 4,000 jobs from the United Kingdom if Brexit negotiations result in a bad deal of regulations and trade agreements between Britain and the European Union, JPMorgan President Jamie Dimon said on Thursday.

“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,” said Dimon in an interview during the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

Those 4,000 workers would account for more than a quarter of the company’s near-16,000 UK workers.

However, that figure was later lowered, with JPMorgan expected to move between 500 and 1,000 staff to cities including Frankfurt, Dublin, and Luxembourg in order to secure its EU business.

“We love London, we love working there,” Dimon said, adding that having a presence in London meant “huge efficiencies” for JPMorgan and for the EU.

JPMorgan employs almost 10,500 in London, more than any other investment bank. JPMorgan CEO Daniel Pinto said in May that the bank would move “hundreds” of people in the short term, in what seemed to be a reversal of Dimon’s pre-Brexit warnings of up to 4,000 UK job losses.

Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein later told sources in Davos that some steps taken by the Wall Street bank to prepare for Brexit were “not going to be undone.”

“Once we start to repaper – which is very cumbersome because it involves lots of lawyers on both sides and takes months – once we start that, are we going to go back? Probably not,” Blankfein said.

Other financial firms are getting constantly cautious about the lack of progress in Brexit trade talks.

Swiss investment bank UBS, which employs 5,000 people in London, said that it planned to implement its Brexit contingency plans early this year. The Bank of England and consultancy EY have warned that as many as 10,000 city jobs could go by March next year without a Brexit trade deal.

JPMorgan’s Dimon has previously been a critic of Brexit, and even warned around 4 months after the referendum that the UK’s vote to leave the European Union had made the chance of a Eurozone collapse 5 times more likely.

When he was asked whether that outcome would threaten the success of London as a financial sector, Dimon said, “yep.”

JPMorgan shares rose 0.03% to close at $115.70. Its shares were up 0.01% in after-hours trading.

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