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The boss of JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon, has warned Andy Burnham against raising tax charges on banks, suggesting it could threaten plans to build its £۳bn headquarters in London and drive investment away from Britain.
The chief executive of the world’s biggest bank, who has a track record of criticising the UK’s bank tax surcharge, does not want to see the UK’s new prime minister targeting the banking industry to raise extra revenue.
“I mean, it may sound great, ‘tax the banks’, but it’s $۵bn that my shareholders paid on that extra tax,” said Dimon on the Master Investor Podcast with Wilfred Frost, in an interview recorded last week and released on Tuesday. “I just think things like that have adverse consequences.”
Banks in the UK pay a ۲۸% corporation tax rate, higher than the standard ۲۵%, as well as a separate levy on their UK balance sheets.
“I would be very cautious if I was a government thinking that penalising any company out of the ordinary is a good thing for that country,” Dimon said. “I always thought [the UK bank levy] was wrong.
“JP Morgan did not damage the UK and I called the chancellor at the time. [We] did not damage the UK. We’re a great citizen there. We hire people there. We want to be bigger there.”
Dimon gave the go-ahead to build a ۲۷۹,۰۰۰ sq metre (۳m sq ft) tower in Canary Wharf last year hours after the banking industry was spared increased taxes in former chancellor Rachel Reeves’s autumn budget.
However, in May Dimon said he could scrap plans to build the £۳bn tower, which will serve as JP Morgan’s UK headquarters and house more than half its ۲۳,۰۰۰ UK workforce, if Keir Starmer were replaced by a new Labour prime minister who was hostile to banks.
He reiterated his warning on the podcast, saying he did not know what he would do about the planned office if Burnham’s government did raise taxes for banks.
Asked whether he would U-turn on the decision to build the Canary Wharf tower, he said: “That’s a binary decision … I don’t know what I would do. I thought Rachel [Reeves] did a great job by the way. I want London to be a happy home for a long time.
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He added: “[The UK] should have a competitive tax system … that is consistent and conducive to capital formation that will drive the growth of a country.”
Trade unions have been urging Burnham to tax wealth, and the Trades Union Congress has claimed that £۹bn could be raised over four years if the previous Conservative government’s cut to the bank surcharge were reversed.
“If you have an uncompetitive tax system, capital leaves your country,” Dimon said. “And if capital leaves your country, it goes to other countries. And you see that now. You see, what is it? How many companies have delisted from London in the last couple of years? I wouldn’t want to see that if I was running a country.”
