Like any divorce, Brexit to sport high price target

As anyone who has been through one knows, divorce is, well, expensive.

So it is with Brexit, where news reports this week show that the European Union has boosted its estimates of just how much the “Brexit bill” will be – and now it is 100 billion euros, as demanded in part by France and Germany. The bill is tied to liabilities that must be footed by the U.K.  Among those items, as reported by the Independent: administrative fees and farm subsidies.  The newest tally is far higher than the 60 billion euros floated not all that long ago, in February.   The bill is still open to further revisions and will likely be offset at least partially by a rebate to the U.K.

In the meantime, there’s debate over just whether the U.K. should be on the hook for anything as Prime Minister Theresa May has been lobbied not to foot the bill – and May herself has said that she will  be “a bloody difficult woman” in the fray.

JPMorgan looks for the (Br)exit

And, amid the fray, JPMorgan Chase has said that it will bring hundreds of its bankers based in London to expanding offices in Frankfurt, Luxembourg and Dublin, in efforts to maintain ties with the Continent.  In an interview with Bloomberg, Daniel Pinto, who heads investment banking, said that JPMorgan is “going to use the three banks we already have in Europe as the anchors for our operations.  We will have to move hundreds of people in the short term to be ready for day one, when negotiations finish, and then we will look at the longer-term numbers.”

The firm has already telegraphed that a few thousand jobs could make the leap away from the U.K.  Against this backdrop, Pinto told the newswire that “we have to plan for a scenario where there is no U.K.-EU passporting deal, and we have to move a substantial portion of our business to continue serving our European clients.  We’ll have to wait to see what kind of deal can be achieved and see what we need to do from there.”

And so do Deutsche, and Barclays…

JPMorgan is not the only one looking at relocation plans in earnest, as Deutsche Bank  also stated that it may move as many as 4,000 staffers away from the City.  Barclays will begin its contingency staffing shifts in the next several months.  The new hotspots appear to be Dublin and Frankfurt.