Mr. Oliver Gilvarry:

We have seen some discussions on this within a number of the European supervisory authorities. The point the Commission is making in this regard is that due to the large number of entities moving out of London and looking to set up subsidiaries or other entities within the EU so they can continue to offer their services to their customers within the 27 remaining EU member states, there is significant concern about supervisory arbitrage, or people looking for jurisdictions with a lighter touch framework. The Commission is saying the only way we can achieve supervisory convergence is by moving supervision of these entities to a centralised level within Europe. The UK's departure from the EU is advancing that change by acting as a catalyst to force it to happen. We are countering that by arguing that although the UK is leaving, we do not see why the existing tools - maybe with some modifications - cannot be used to ensure we do not have a situation where one jurisdiction has a light-touch regime and another jurisdiction has a hard-touch regime. Rather than saying the only way to achieve this goal is to bring everything to Paris or Frankfurt, we are saying the existing powers can be used.