City giants lure top Treasury official to aid Brexit plan

A senior Treasury official has been drafted in to help Britain's financial services sector respond to the potential loss of seamless access to Europe's single market.

Sky News has learnt that Emil Levendoglu, who was involved in drafting key legislation affecting the UK banking industry, joined the European Financial Services Chairmen's Advisory Committee (EFSCAC) earlier this week.

Sources said he would be involved in formulating the industry's work preparing for Brexit, alongside EFSCAC members led by Baroness Vadera, its chairman.

Mr Levendoglu was the Treasury's deputy director of financial services‎ until 2012, and more recently has played a senior role in its work on the digital economy and review of Network Rail.

He is understood to have taken a career break from the Treasury, but is expected to return there once his stint at EFSCAC‎ concludes.

The recruitment of a senior Treasury official to the heart of the City's response to Brexit could hint at closer links between them at a time when Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, is clashing with Cabinet colleagues over the future of the UK's single market access.

Mr Hammond sought to dispel growing anxiety about a so-called hard Brexit when he appeared before a parliamentary committee earlier this week, reiterating his view that net migration should be reduced "in a way that protects our economy".

Earlier this month, TheCityUK, a lobbying group into which EFSCAC has now been absorbed, ‎published a report warning that under the most extreme exit scenario, as many as 35,000 jobs and £5bn of annual tax revenues could be put at risk.

Other members of the committee include Robert Rooney, the head of Morgan Stanley (Xetra: 885836 - news) in Europe; Xavier Rolet, chief executive of London Stock Exchange Group; Michael Cole-Fontayn, regional chairman of BNY Mellon; and Mark Boleat of the City of London Corporation.

An EFSCAC spokesman declined to comment.