He added that, while large financial institutions make a certain type of decisions autonomously, “It is not forbidden to help them reflect, to give them information about the quality, in particular, of the [financial] centre in Paris. We do this without any particular animosity vis-à-vis the City of London, which is a big financial hub and will continue to be a big financial hub in the world.”

Meanwhile, the head of the Eurozone finance ministers, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, declared yesterday that Britain ‘won’t get just the cherry-picking part of the deal’ in talks on exiting the EU. Pierre Moscovici, the EU’s Economics Commissioner, said, “Brexit must not be a punishment … for Great Britain, or British citizens. It must not be a punishment for the citizens of the rest of the EU.” He said there must be “a clean, a correct negotiation” because the EU and UK would remain “interlinked” after it leaves.

Separately, responding to the Sunday Times report that it was preparing to move 2,000 staff if the UK left the single market, a Goldman Sachs spokeswoman said the bank was undecided on its response to Brexit.