LONDON (Reuters) – European companies would be the losers if the European Union tried to impose barriers on London financiers, as such firms would be unable to access some of the deepest markets in the world, Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove said on Thursday.
“There are few places in the world where you have such a deep and broad capital market,” Gove told the Brexit committee of the upper house of the British parliament.
“If it were the case that the EU chose deliberately to raise the barrier themselves on access for our fianncial services to their market, the losers would be investors in equities in EU companies who would not be able to get the very best price for any transaction that they wanted.
“It would be another example of potential self harm on the EU’s part,” Gove said.
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge and kate Holton; editing by Stephen Addison)
