PARIS BATTLES TO CASH IN FROM BREXIT : "I THINK WE CAN GAIN 10.000 JOBS"
Angélique Chrisafis
The Guardian
11/14/2017
Amid the gleaming glass towers of Paris’s La Défense business district, cranes dot the skyline as drills clatter away on the building sites of future skyscrapers and acres of new office space. Marie-Célie Guillaume proudly walks the route of the guided tours she gives to companies drawing up Brexit contingency plans and considering moving jobs from London to France after the UK leaves the European Union.
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La Défense, Europe’s largest business district, happens to be in a building boom just as Paris itself races to construct new office buildings amid a massive extension of the public transport system. The business district is ready with hundreds of thousands of square metres of comparatively cheap office space for any company that might decide to relocate staff from London, particularly if Brexit means the loss of London’s “passporting rights”, which allow international financial firms access to EU markets.
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Paris has markedly stepped up its pace in the race among European cities to corner the “Brexit relocation” sector. That has been noted by the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, who praised Paris pointedly in a tweet on Tuesday - raising specualtion that the city could benefit from changes to the bank’s London operations after Brexit.
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Valérie Pécresse, the head of the Île de France region that surrounds Paris said: “French Labour laws have been reformed and the wealth tax has been transformed. So the message is that France is reformable and there is a new state of mind. I think a lot of positive messages have been sent and there is not a single person left in the City of London who thinks France is the enemy of finance.”
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