Impact of Brexit in London recruitment
Now that it is clear that the UK will leave the EU in January, what is your perspective on recruitment in London for European citizens? Do you guys think banks will move to Frankfurt/Paris to avoid dealing with new immigration laws, or that they will stay in London and hire more British kids? I am asking as an EU citizen hoping to apply for SA 2021.
Can guarantee, if you're from a major country (US/India/China/CA-AUS-NZ/Brazil), you'll have a much easier time at obtaining the immigration visa. BoJo will have to loosen up immigration policy to get a favourable trade deal with either of those nations, especially India and China which have been clamouring for that for so long. That being said, language skills will be a hurdle for those two countries, since candidates don't usually have stellar English (if they do, they might make it), or they otherwise don't know a European language, unlike candidates from say Mexico or Brazil or Africa. Americans from top schools with at least one language proficiency are going to have an easier time. Order of importance -> German>Italian~French>Spanish (solely from personal observation)
I don't see London shifting away as the centre for IBD, and most PE firms have already carried out passporting. Securities trading won't be affected as much either, since most of it is algorithmic, and passporting has been carried out. Boutique firms without a European presence will have a signficantly difficult time, and rightfully deserved since they had three fucking years to do that. So yeah, people will still live in London, although European bankers may prefer to stick to their home turfs.
That being said, I went to my girlfriend's hometown near Koln-Dusseldorf, and her maternal place near Munich, and both places were fucking boring compared to London. The only reason we may not continue in London is because she is an NHS resident, and under Boris Johnson, the NHS is going to be thoroughly fucked more and more (it is already fucked - imagine 5 more years of Tory cuts).
EDIT:- For OP (EU citizen), SA should be no problem, but getting FT will be harder, since boutiques will no longer prefer EU kids, and WILL 100% choose a British kid over you, all things equal.
Even before Brexit banks had started the process of moving jobs out of London, either to cheaper cities in the UK (see DB moving ER jobs to Birmingham) or to Dublin. London has become a victim of its own success with the cost of living requiring higher and higher wages to attract and retain candidates. I expect this trend to continue regardless of what immigration policies the UK adopts post Brexit. In terms of front-office roles I expect London will remain the hub of Europe and I would expect little to no impact on the ability to hire skilled workers from the EU. The anti-immigrant sentiment in the UK is not directed at high earning foreign bankers, it is directed at low-wage immigrants from Eastern Europe who are willing to work for below minimum wage salaries in low-end retail and factory jobs. The brickie in Sunderland who has seen construction wages depressed by cheap labour from Poland has no clue and couldn't care less about who some investment bank chooses to hire in London (which is basically a foreign country to most people in the rest of the UK).