Standard Chartered and HSBC face a combined annual cost of about $2 billion to pay the bank levy, increasing the pressure on them to consider moving their headquarters out of Britain.
According to senior bankers and analysts, both banks will face calls to carry out fresh studies on whether the benefit of being in the UK is outweighed by the costs.
Among those costs, onlookers said, were the bank levy, which rises for the ninth time to 0.21 per cent of banks’ global balance sheets this year, and incoming rules to ring-fence retail banking operations. Moreover, it is feared that the febrile political atmosphere for banks could get worse under a different government after the election in May.
Shareholders in Standard Chartered and HSBC have