GBPUSD: Looking as though we’re breaking above the top of the pennant formation this morning. Chart/Levels from Analyst, Nicole Elliott – Investors Chronicle.

EU to extend clearing arrangements in Britain Because it has no viable alternatives

The Financial Times reports that on Friday Valdis Dombrovskis of the European Commission announced that Europe’s access to UK clearing houses would be extended for another year once the March 2020 deadline is reached. He admitted that the EU financial services industry wouldn’t have any alternative arrangements up and running by then. Rather a blow as the swaps clearing business is worth €640 trillion. Catherine McGuiness, policy chair of the City of London Corporation, points out in City AM today that data from the UK’s ONS Britain exported £82 billion of financial services last year giving the nation the biggest surplus in the world. She also spoke to the Commissioner on cooperation tackling climate change and the transition to a low carbon economy.

Schools in Hong Kong will remain closed again today after police fired rubber bullets, water cannon and tear gas at protesters barricaded into the Polytechnic University today. There have been suggestions that police had aimed at kettling them in the campus grounds.