The forecasts for City job losses in the event of a hard Brexit seem all over the place. UBS now says it may need to move only a fraction of the 1,000 jobs it originally said might have to shift from London to the EU if there is no Brexit deal. Other banks are also talking about far fewer job moves than their initial estimates. Yet the Bank of England believes 75,000 jobs could still be lost to the City. Surely both can’t be right.

Well, yes they can. Here’s why. One of the big questions for London-based investment banks has been the extent to which EU regulators will allow them to execute deals for local customers after a hard Brexit by means of back-to-back trades. This involves their German office, say, agreeing a trade with a local client then immediately doing a mirror trade with London, so passing on all the market risk.