The centre of Europe’s share trading has shifted to Amsterdam – this is a problem for London that is only going to grow
The past year of all our lives has been defined by people failing to understand exponential processes. It’s slightly worrying, then, to hear financial professionals in London saying the amount of business that’s shifted to European financial centres since Brexit is not that big. Nearly everything is small to begin with. The trouble is that things grow.
In itself, as William Wright from the New Financial thinktank says, the fact that Amsterdam has overtaken London in terms of equity trading volume is unlikely to make much difference to anyone’s profit and loss account (or a country’s tax-take). Measuring trading volume is in any case something of an abstract concept, which these days depends more on the way in which computer algorithms split up orders to get the best price, than the actual amount of business. The commission on equity trading is incredibly low and the exchange fees even lower.
