According to the Telegraph HSBC is preparing to relocate its HQ from London to Hong Kong due to increasing taxes and extra layers of EU regulation heaped on the City of London. Thanks to higher taxes and the suffocating bureaucracy being imposed on businesses, the UK is becoming uncompetitive.
Warnings that bankers could desert the UK if the government interfered in their bonus schemes were dismissed with a sneer by the likes of Vince Cable. But while focusing efforts on playing the gallery on that trivial matter, the government seems to have missed the frustration of entire corporations that have the capacity to move their headquarter operations out of the country.
If HSBC decides to relocated the impact will be billions of pounds less in the UK Treasury coffers. It will be this idiotic grandstanding government and unaccountable EU bureaucrats to blame for such a move and the harmful impact on our economy.
Autonomous Mind 
So Cleggys promise that the banks will be paying £2.5billion in tax every year of this parliament is a load of b******s then?
What banks WfW, we will have no banks.
Nor any manufacturing, fabrication, mining, production, gas, oil, electricity, insurance companies, exports, engineers or economy if they are allowed to continue like this.
I hope they do relocate, perhaps then our politicians can get a fucking grip and stop their love-in with the EU.
If these moronic politicians want to play chicken I’ve got a deep fat fryer I’ll happily introduce them to.
I suppose this means that the “HQ” will be moved metaphorically, for taxation purpose, to a cheaper tax-haven, while the building (rented no doubt, for tax purposes) and staff will remain where they are?
Obviously this is a “shot-across-the-bows” of the ship of state prior to the budget……which will endow even more tax-haven status upon the City of London.
I’ll believe that they have “gone” when they pack-up their operation’ ALL of it, and depart…..moving their “customers” to other banks (like Barclays….another 200-tax-haven-branch-bank)
This is a catastrophe.
And the morons over at ukuncut are still chanting their idiotic slogans, that this is “good” and that “someone else will fill the gap”, demonstrating their usual stunning financial acumen.
How wonderful it is to be on the other side of the water and watch the demise of a country that once ruled the world,intelligence is a no word, as is practical experience, the idiots are not only in control, they represent 99.9% of the population
No John, the only thing that would go would be the HQ and its staff. That means it will no longer be a UK based company even though their branch network would remain. There are significant tax implications for the UK, particularly as other international groups will see which way the wind is blowing and look to move offshore to protect their interests against the ‘all you have is ours’ mentality of our political class.
The country is screwed anyway.
How would you like that?
Screwed with International Banks or screwed without International banks?
We should slaughter them, not tax them.
Sorry Alan but these morons barely represent 20% of the population and even then they rule in spite of our wishes, not in accordance with them.
The HSBC is only domiciled in the UK because it took over the Midland Bank. I’m surprised it has stayed so long!
The real issue here is regulation. The banks are in the mess they are in because the Basel II rules were framed mainly by EU technoprats who paid more attention to the EU’s perceived need for financial integration than they did to sound banking practice. The spivs did the rest.
Basel III is almost as braindead and, already, the spivs are back pushing the boundaries. Unless there is a radical shift back to prudent banking the system is going to fail again and if the banks are not UK based there is a better chance that the UK taypayer won’t have to bail them out again. Let them fail on somebody else’s patch – it’s cheaper in the long run!
Its not only Hong Kong that is attracting British companies, so is Switzerland (which is not in the EU!.
“Swiss offer firms haven from British tax hikes”
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/Swiss_offer_firms_haven_from_British_tax_hikes.html?cid=8509292
The political class in this country are barking mad!
But do not forget ‘Economic Prison’ that the EU is pressuring the Swiss to ‘harmonise’ so companies cannot stay based in Europe but be outside the EU’s high tax regime. The EU is doing all it can to close down tax havens so it can eliminate competition in tax and charge our companies what the hell they like.
But John, it is not the banks who needed propping up that are clearing off. It is the well run and profitable ones that are going. We will be left with the unattractive dross.
My point Sir, (your figures) 80% of the population has not the intelligence to fix the problems
@Alan Chappell
I think I know how you feel about the UK. Watching from afar is damn good fun.
Which is why I spend a couple of hours most evenings reading about the glorious mess the USA is becoming. Fair goes I say. You laugh at us and we laugh at you. Thing is there is more your side to laugh at. EPA gives me belly laughs. Your edukashun system. HaHa.
Cap and tax.Nancy Pelosi. And almost everything that muslim marxist of yours gets up to. Oh don’t ! Stop it!! My sides are splitting.
Good fun ain’t it?
Regards from the old country.
@Matt
Fornication Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, you play hard and below the belt.
I wish we could work together and pitch both of our overlords into the Boston Harbor!!
HSBC, do they actually pay anything net into the country’s … I mean the state’s coffers?
Will their customers follow them? Except for the loss of jobs I suspect the state would be in no worse a mess.
The banks that need to go are the BoE and NMR. Of course as they run the state, no effing chance.
Is there such a thing as an honest bank? Deutsche recently got caught out doing an 850 mil euro VAT fraud.
As a HSBC customer, I fully understand the HSBC’s motives toward rationalization. If its more costly to run their HQ in the UK and if the environment there is beset with bureaucratic hurdles, then it makes perfect sense to re-locate to HK.