Morgan Stanley has denied that it is moving 2,000 jobs to Dublin and Frankfurt following the vote for the UK to leave the EU.

Sources told the BBC on Friday that the process was already underway.

The American investment bank was reported to be moving jobs in euro clearing as well as other investment banking functions and senior management.

A spokesman for Morgan Stanley told the Independent that the reports were untrue and that the bank has no immediate plans to make changes.

“The UK’s vote to leave the European Union is a very significant decision which will have a considerable impact, the extent of which will not be known for some time," the spokesman said.

"There will be at least a period of two years before an actual exit takes place, so there will be time to implement any changes required to adjust our business to the new environment. Morgan Stanley will continue to monitor developments very closely and will adapt accordingly while prioritising the interests of our clients, our shareholders and our employees," he added.



Initial reports suggested Morgan Stanley needed to move staff because of the passporting system, which allows it to offer financial services across all EU nations without having a permanent base in that country.

6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you

Businesses are expected to start restructuring, which may include redundancies, as they take stock of the implications of Brexit.

HSBC and Goldman Sachs have said they have no immediate plans to move operations out of the UK, despite statements made before the referendum.

Stuart Gulliver, HSBC’s chief executive, told Sky News in February that Brexit could see 20 per cent of its 5,000 London investment bankers moved out of London to Paris.

Goldman Sachs also issued several warnings it would be likely to move some staff out of the City if the UK voted to quit the 28 member bloc.

But this morning Douglas Flint, HSBC’s chair, emphasised the bank’s “commitment to British businesses, customers and staff” adding that it “remains undiminished” despite the vote.

Aneil Balgobin, partner and employment law solicitor at Simpson Millar, said he expected to see investment in foreign offices.

"Employees in the sectors that will be affected immediately might want to dig out their employment contracts this weekend and update themselves with the most relevant paragraphs such as restrictive covenants and redundancy terms," he added.

Many City institutions had warned prior to the vote that leaving the EU could mean job losses and movement of operation to the continent.

6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you Show all 6 1 /6 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you More expensive foreign holidays The first practical effect of a vote to Leave is that the pound will be worth less abroad, meaning foreign holidays will cost us more nito100 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you No immediate change in immigration status The Prime Minister will have to address other immediate concerns. He is likely to reassure nationals of other EU countries living in the UK that their status is unchanged. That is what the Leave campaign has said, so, even after the Brexit negotiations are complete, those who are already in the UK would be allowed to stay Getty 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you Higher inflation A lower pound means that imports would become more expensive. This is likely to mean the return of inflation – a phenomenon with which many of us are unfamiliar because prices have been stable for so long, rising at no more than about 2 per cent a year. The effect may probably not be particularly noticeable in the first few months. At first price rises would be confined to imported goods – food and clothes being the most obvious – but inflation has a tendency to spread and to gain its own momentum AFP/Getty Images 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you Interest rates might rise The trouble with inflation is that the Bank of England has a legal obligation to keep it as close to 2 per cent a year as possible. If a fall in the pound threatens to push prices up faster than this, the Bank will raise interest rates. This acts against inflation in three ways. First, it makes the pound more attractive, because deposits in pounds will earn higher interest. Second, it reduces demand by putting up the cost of borrowing, and especially by taking larger mortgage payments out of the economy. Third, it makes it more expensive for businesses to borrow to expand output Getty 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you Did somebody say recession? Mr Carney, the Treasury and a range of international economists have warned about this. Many Leave voters appear not to have believed them, or to think that they are exaggerating small, long-term effects. But there is no doubt that the Leave vote is a negative shock to the economy. This is because it changes expectations about the economy’s future performance. Even though Britain is not actually be leaving the EU for at least two years, companies and investors will start to move money out of Britain, or to scale back plans for expansion, because they are less confident about what would happen after 2018 AFP/Getty Images 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you And we wouldn’t even get our money back All this will be happening while the Prime Minister, whoever he or she is, is negotiating the terms of our future access to the EU single market. In the meantime, our trade with the EU would be unaffected, except that companies elsewhere in the EU may be less interested in buying from us or selling to us, expecting tariff barriers to go up in two years’ time. Whoever the Chancellor is, he or she may feel the need to bring in a new Budget Getty Images

"The UK’s decision to leave the EU brings with it huge uncertainty for jobs within the financial services industry," Paul Cook, founder a cultural diagnostics firm Alderbrooke, said.

Cook doubted whether jobs would be moved immediately.