> They did not because they actually did not want to be regulated by EU
That's not how banking regulation works though. If a bank wants to do business in the EU, and all the big banks do, then they have to have entities regulated by the relevant EU regulators. Prior to Brexit, it was ok for a bank to be regulated by the PRA or FCA to trade in the EU. Post Brexit, they need to have entities with banking licenses that are subject to EU regulators.
And that's what they did: they set up banking entities in Germany, France, Ireland etc. And they moved/hired staff into those countries to support that activity (if they weren't there already).
They didn't wholesale move out of London for 2 reasons: The UK is a big market and there is a large pool of skilled people in London that it wouldn't make sense to ignore.
> Real Brexiteers were bankers
Right. Bankers famously want their ill gotten gains to go to taxation, duty and red tape rather than into their own pockets. They lobby hard for extra regulation, multiple, diverse, enforcement regimes and multiple, diverse taxation regimes. They also want their customers' money to be going to taxation, duty and red tape so that they can't spend it on banking services. Because bankers are famously altruistic like that.
To paraphrase Pauli, the idea that the finance sector, esp in the UK, wanted Brexit is not even wrong.
The british financial industry has been one of the harder hit by brexit: London has effectively lost its status as the biggest financial hub in Europe. So if that was their plan it was a bad one.
Some of them. There are not enough bankers in the UK to produce the turnout for leave that we saw. There were also a lot of people whose main motivation was "f*** the system", and they sort of succeeded, even if they ended up worse off as a result.
It makes me think that the academic left should be a bit more careful with their regular calls to "burn down the evil capitalist system". It turns out a mob with torches might also set fire to the parts you like.
Brexit was a democratic vote. Maybe some banks invested some money to push Brexit. But its pretty clear that overwhelmingly immigration was what the Brexit voting base actually cared about.
Overwhelming most people in banking are conventional liberals. They live in big cities and are internationalists.
Maybe the very elite of the richest banks thought that way, but not bankers broadly.
There were rumors that because UK is leaving many banks from London City will move to Germany or Belgium or the Netherlands.
They did not because they actually did not want to be regulated by EU and UK can serve rich people better while poor people got it worse.
Under the guise that poor less educated people wanted brexit… where they were brainwashed.