UK to unveil City of London reform package on Friday - report

The UK government is reportedly set to announce a package aimed at boosting growth in financial services and the City of London on Friday.

According to Bloomberg, the Treasury is in the process of finalising the package and has pencilled in the end of the week for the announcement, pending sign-off from the Cabinet.

City minister Andrew Griffith had been expected to unveil the reforms, which the government will pitch as securing new opportunities from Brexit by sweeping away unnecessary regulations, before Christmas, Bloomberg said. Key to that has been a plan to replicate the ‘Big Bang’, the wave of deregulation in the City in 1986.

It’s unclear how radical any changes to the rules might be, or how much of a difference they will make to London’s competitiveness.

Bloomberg cited people familiar with the matter as saying that two policies trailed so far are the repeal of the banker bonus cap and adjustments to the ring-fencing regime. But the repeal of the bonus cap is a legal and human resources minefield, it said, while plans to partly relax the ring-fencing of banks don’t go as far as some firms hoped.