The EU’s plot to seize euro derivative clearing from London and forcibly move the business into the eurozone could “be a road to the splintering of this global infrastructure”, according to Sir Jon Cunliffe, the Bank of England’s deputy governor.

Britain is the global centre for clearing financial instruments, a business which is most efficiently done en masse in one place. The sector has also been deliberately concentrated by regulators who want risk concentrated in one place so it can be more closely monitored and managed.

But the European Central Bank tried to move the euro-denominated parts of the industry, which handles transactions with a nominal value of hundreds of trillions of euros per year, into the single currency area.