Juncker hands financial services job to Britain

The new European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker handed Britain supervision of EU financial services yesterday, offering an olive branch to a country that is weighing its future in the bloc.

Juncker, whose appointment to head the EU’s executive was strongly opposed by British Prime Minister David Cameron, said that Jonathan Hill will become the European Union’s first dedicated financial services commissioner, giving him huge influence over the City of London and rivals Paris and Frankfurt.

Cameron’s spokesman said the appointment of Hill, who was leader of Britain’s upper house of parliament, the House of Lords, will ensure that the voice of EU members from outside the eurozone will be fully represented in the bloc’s wider single market.

“Financial services is a very significant sector here in the UK so we welcome that and look forward to working with Lord Hill and the entire Commission-designate,” the spokesman said.

London is the 28-country bloc’s biggest financial centre. Britain, one of the most Eurosceptic countries in the bloc, has become more antagonistic towards Brussels as supervision of banks and markets shifts increasingly to the EU level.

This loss of national power has fuelled a surge in support for British anti- EU party UKIP, prompting Cameron to promise a referendum on membership of the EU in 2017 if he is still prime minister after national polls next year.

“It’s a very good appointment for the City,” Chris Cummings, chief executive of TheCityUK, which promotes Britain as a financial centre.

“In the context of British membership of the EU, it demonstrates that other member states are keen to listen to the reform perspective Britain has put forward,” Cummings said.

Cameron has urged the EU to push harder for growth as the eurozone, Britain’s biggest export market, stutters.

Simon Lewis, chief executive of the Association for Financial Markets in Europe, a banking lobby, said Hill’s appointment recognises the importance of Europe’s capital markets at a crucial moment, as an unprecedented array of new regulatory measures reach the implementation phase.

Hill, a public relations consultant and former chief of staff to former UK prime minister John Major, will oversee one of Juncker’s core projects: to create a capital markets union that will expand markets such as asset- backed securities to fund economic growth as banks regroup after the financial crisis.