Britain needs to ease the tax burden on the City of London to help it compete against New York and other rivals, a new report has suggested.
Lobby group TheCityUK’s strategy paper wants lower taxes on banks and reduced restrictions on recruiting overseas staff to help London maintain its position as a financial centre post-Brexit.
"By some metrics, the UK is losing ground: London is currently slipping further behind New York each year while other centres are strengthening," the paper said.
New York overtook London in 2018 and is now dominant in areas such as technology, new issues and pharma.
"The UK therefore needs to adopt a relentless focus on strengthening its international competitiveness to win back the prize of being the world's leading international financial centre," said the report.
It has a five-year target for London drawn up with 60 financial services groups to "out-compete its rivals" by amending tax, visa and other rules and become the global hub for financial data, sustainability investing and investment and risk management.
It calculates taxes paid by banks based in London are 13% higher than a competitor in New York with UK firms also paying considerably more than those in Hong Kong, Singapore and Frankfurt.
Government has already started to look at some of the issues, notably the bank surcharge but TheCityUK also wants friendlier VAT treatment for UK-based funds.
However, the single most important issue for financial firms is being able to hire globally, TheCityUK CEO Miles Celic told Reuters.