Two of Spain’s leading cities are planning a charm offensive to interest firms in London in relocating after the UK’s decision to leave the EU.
Madrid and Barcelona are each weighing up measures, including tax incentives, to attract financial companies who need a base within the EU.
Madrid’s government hopes to become the “new financial centre of the EU”. It plans to send delegations to the City of London in September.
Cristina Cifuentes, its president, said it hoped to interest established firms such as banks as well as start-ups, adding that the sort of companies the Spanish capital will target are in the technology, financial, automotive, aerospace and biotech sectors.
Cifuentes said that Madrid “is one of the most important financial centres in the world”.
It is also seeking to become the new home to the European Banking Authority, currently based in London, according to the Financial Times. Wherever the eurozone banking regulator winds up, it is likely that a number of banks and agencies will seek to cluster around it.
Spain is also competing to attract the European Medicines Agency, which oversees the introduction of new medicines across the EU. Another key institute, it would attract other agencies to relocate near it.
Barcelona already has a reputation as a technology and telecoms hub as well as having a thriving start-up scene, according to, Jaume Collboni who holds government responsibility for enterprise, culture and innovation.
It is keen to attract more, and it is hardly alone. Within days of the voting result, a German political group sent an advertising van to London encouraging start-ups to move to Berlin.
Frankfurt, Germany’s financial capital, is determined not to be left behind in the grab. It is already home to the European Central Bank as well as nearly 200 foreign banks.
Its mayor, Peter Feldmann, said Frankfurt was both “laughing and crying” at the referendum outcome, but now that it has been taken, his city is “ready and waiting to provide bankers with a new home”.
Frankfurt, he said, boasts negligible unemployment, available office space, record tax revenue – much of it devoted to education – and the highest per capita cultural budget in Germany along with a banking tradition dating back 600 years.
A recent survey of 360 London bankers by the Boston Consulting Group placed Frankfurt ahead of its rivals, such as Paris, Amsterdam, Dublin or Luxembourg. Its advantages were seen as its central location, sophisticated infrastructure and property prices considerably lower than those in London or Paris.
Frankfurt still takes pride in having given refuge to hundreds of English Protestants who fled religious persecution under Mary I in the 1550s. And while he would not compare the bankers to desperate refugees, “we’ll certainly also make them feel equally welcome here”, Feldmann said.
