Robert Walters hits a record as it reassures on Brexit

The Brexit bankers exodus is a fallacy because “a 35-year-old from Surrey with two kids, who can’t speak German, isn’t going to uproot to Frankfurt”, the eponymous boss of City headhunter Robert Walters claimed today.

The veteran recruiter also claimed Europe won’t benefit at all if any firms do move some of their work out of the UK.

He said: “We have offices in all the places where there’s talk of the banks moving functions to — Luxembourg, Paris, Frankfurt, Dublin — and there are no indigenous skill sets in those countries.

“If anyone benefits, it will be New York rather than Europe. Funnily enough, we’re there too. So we’re relatively relaxed about impact of Brexit on financial services.”

Robert Walters today posted a record pre-tax profit of £28.1 million for 2016, up 16%.

The firm now makes almost three quarters of its fees from outside the UK but, despite admitting client confidence was “impacted” by the EU referendum, it raised profits in this country last year too.

Walters added on Brexit: “I think people get bored of it, like they bored of recession.

“New avenues are opening all over the place — billions of pounds worth of floats, new technology — there’s a lot of good stuff going on in the UK.”