Frankfurt tempts London's banks with ‘fire at will’ plans

Banking executives! Worried that Brexit will scupper your ability to gamble across Europe? Afraid that Paris is the city of lunch as well as the city of lights? Then send your bankers to Frankfurt!

We’re the dullest City on earth, so your people really won’t have anything much to do other than work. And we’re trying to tweak our labour laws to make it easier for you to sack your high earning staff should some of your bets go bad and tip the economy off a cliff again.

Frankfurt. The financial services centre with flexible rules like London’s.

No I haven’t just flown back to the capital after having had a few too many glasses of France’s finest export. According to Bloomberg, Frankfurt is genuinely considering reforming its labour laws in an attempt to win some of the business that looks sure to depart these shores after Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty is triggered.

Europe’s alternative financial centres are all at it, but Frankfurt has a problem. While it’s already a serious financial hub, it risks missing out on the once-in-a-generation opportunity offered by Brexit because of Germany’s labour laws.

Those laws make the country a beacon of civilisation when compared to Britain. The problem is that if you’re a bank and you insist on handing lots of people six-figure packages, or more, it gets a bit sticky when the economy takes a dive and you’re left struggling to keep them in the style to which they have become accustomed.

To get around this, Thomas Schäfer, the finance minister in the federal state of Hesse, which includes Frankfurt, proposes extending the rules that make it somewhat easier to fire top executives in Germany to include top earners more generally – those making more than €300,000 (£253,000), for example.

There’s something beautiful about his idea. In a world made for the rich, here is a conservative politician proposing to strip them of some of their employment rights with the aim of attracting jobs.

It is the Anglo-Saxon model in reverse; the exact opposite of what Britain and the US have been doing for years: namely stripping those at the bottom of their rights. Mr Schäfer, I salute you!

The trouble is, he looks likely to need the support of the federal Labour Ministry, which is run by the Social Democrats, Germany’s main left-wing party. They might just feel that once the principle is established it won’t be long before less wealthy and more vulnerable workers find themselves subject to the same laws. Which is understandable.

Even were Frankfurt’s banks to be given carte blanche to fire people when they want to, would they be able to hire people? Is Frankfurt the sort of place that would attract the sort of people banks say that they need in numbers?

I’ve never been there, so I’m reliant on the views of my banking contacts. They are less than favourable. The prospect of working in the city makes them shudder.

It’s interesting to note that a lot of hedge funds skipped off from London to Switzerland a while back, because of its rock-bottom taxes among other things. Several of them then skipped back. What’s the point in earning gazillions if you can’t have fun with it during your limited free time?

The city of lunch, and of lights, might just have the inside track on all those banking jobs after all.