UK sees early 2018 as ‘crunch time’ for banks’ Brexit decisions - official

Many international banks and financial services firms based in Britain will decide in the first quarter of next year whether to move operations  away ahead of Brexit, according to a senior official at Britain’s Finance Ministry. Katharine Braddick, the ministry’s director general for financial services, said Wednesday that banks using Britain to serve clients in the EU were showing the most urgency in considering relocation plans, Reuters reports. “Those plans, if you like, harden, become more firm, at the point at which they start to alter contractual paperwork. For most of the firms that we talk to that will fall at some point in the first quarter of next year,” Braddick told lawmakers.