Deutsche Bank has announced that it was moving a "large part" of its euro clearing activity from London to Frankfurt - but that the transfer would not result in relocating any of its 7,000 UK staff to Germany.The move was being seen as a boost to Frankfurt's efforts to attract other banks and financial institutions currently based in London but who now face the prospect of having to establish new, post-Brexit European hubs outside the UK.

Deutsche Bank expects other banks to leave the UK for post-Brexit European hubs

"We expect that other banks will follow," Frank Hartmann, a spokesman at Deutsche Bank, said after the move was first revealed by the Financial Times.But Mr Hartmann said the transfer would not affect where the bank's jobs were located. "It's a totally digital, automated exercise. It's literally the same person in London pressing a different button," he said.London has long been the primary venue for transactions in financial products priced in euros, despite the fact that the European Central Bank has repeatedly argued that such activity should be centred within the 19-nation eurozone.About $1 trillion in euro clearing is traded daily in London, representing about three-quarters of all such transactions.CNN reported: "Although the number of people employed directly by the four clearing houses that handle the majority of transactions only numbers in the hundreds, the supporting financial ecosystem is massive.

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"If banks move euro clearing out of London, or the European Union forces them to relocate that activity following Brexit, the loss of scale would cause the ecosystem to become less efficient."Hubertus Väth, chief executive of the marketing group Frankfurt Main Finance, told the Financial Times that moving euro clearing from London to Frankfurt was “on top of our priority list from the very first day after the Brexit referendum”.

EU anti-piracy headquarters to be moved from UK to France and Spain 

Meanwhile, it has been announced that the two headquarters of the EU’s anti-piracy missions off the coast of Somalia will be moved from the UK to France and Spain next year.The EU NAVFOR Operational Headquarters will relocate from its base of Northwood, North London, to the Spanish coastal town of Rota when the UK leaves the EU on March 29 next year, while the Maritime Security Centre Horn of Africa (MSCHOA) will be relocated to the French city of Brest.Under EU law, the bloc’s agencies cannot be located in non-member states and the relocation of the military missions follows the decision last year to shift the European Banking Authority from London to Paris, and to move the European Medicines Agency from London to Amsterdam.

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