EU to extend U.K.’s post-Brexit clearing waiver until June 2025

The European Union’s commissioner for financial services said she will propose extending a temporary waiver that allows its banks and money managers to clear trades in the U.K. through to June 2025. 

“We envisage proposing an extension of the equivalence decision to three years until the end of June 2025,” Mairead McGuinness said at an ECOFIN meeting in Brussels Tuesday. The existing temporary waiver expires in June this year.

The EU has been pushing for more financial activity to move into the bloc but both U.K. and European banks, investment managers and hedge funds had called on the Commission to extend their access, warning of significant market disruption.

Clearing is a key part of the finance world supporting banking, technology and legal jobs across the City of London. Clearinghouses such as the London Stock Exchange Group Plc’s LCH operate at the center of markets, collecting collateral from both sides of a trade to ensure a default on one doesn’t spread panic through financial markets.

The extension is a post-Brexit victory for London, underlining the central role the U.K. capital still plays in Europe’s financial infrastructure. However, McGuinness repeated the EU’s desire to bring more clearing inside the bloc’s borders to strengthen its own markets. 

“In the coming weeks, we will also launch a public consultation on measures to make the EU an attractive clearing hub and on the supervisory arrangements,” for EU clearing houses, McGuinness said. “This public consultation will feed into a strategy on clearing to reduce in medium term our overreliance” on the U.K.’s financial markets infrastructure.