"Brexit was a disaster," said Mainelli, the ceremonial head of London's City financial centre, which stretches over a square mile including the Bank of England, international banks and insurers. "We had 525,000 workers in 2016. My estimate is that we lost just short of 40,000.
"The tally by Mainelli, who spent years charting the fortunes of Britain's financial centre before becoming Lord Mayor and has contact with hundreds of City firms, is far higher than the 7,000 jobs that consultants at EY calculated had left London for the European Union by 2022.
But he said the City of London was growing, including in fields beyond finance, with new jobs that compensated for the fallout of Brexit.
Worker numbers have swelled to 615,000 as insurers and data analysis sectors grow, he said.Nonetheless, his estimate underscores the scale of the fallout, as Britain seeks to rebuild bridges to continental Europe.
"The City voted 70-30 to remain. We did not want it," Mainelli said, adding that he had redoubled his efforts to "engage more" with Europe, making nine visits to countries in the region this year.
His push to bolster relations with the continent comes amid a wider economic slowdown in Britain, which has been riven by disagreement over its departure from the European Union.
Although some hoped that Brexit would give London the freedom to reduce immigration, ditch large amounts of EU regulation and bolster the economy, immigration rose, opens new tab, regulation proved hard to untangle and the economy slowed.
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