London to Singapore, by tax

No matter how much we’re paid, most of us are reluctant to allow the taxman to lift more than half of our earnings directly from our pockets. Throw in a special tax on bonuses, which may or may not be a one-off, and the 50p top-rate income tax levied by the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling is certain to make people wonder if they may not be better off somewhere else.

Despite a lot of noise, we haven’t seen much of an exodus as yet. But if it does, plenty of people think it might be the foreign exchange market that heads the queues at Heathrow and City airports.

FX is increasingly automated: it doesn’t involve the same level of client meetings as, say, debt capital markets. In effect, it doesn’t really matter where the sales and trading teams sit, as long as your key time zones are well covered.

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