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A French raiding party landed in London this week, bent on charming financial services away from the City post-Brexit. As you might expect from the language of love, their only weapons were words.

Pitching to a bunch of hard-nosed bankers — many of whom probably own apartments in the 16th arrondissement anyway — was never going to carry the day with talk of Coq au Vin, the Rive Gauche or the Folies Bergères, n’est-ce pas?

Valérie Pécresse, President of the Parisian region, former Sarkozy budget minister and seductress-in-chief, had to be more commercial than that. So her brochure (an 18th century French word meaning ‘pamphlet, or sheets stitched together’) listed the business benefits of crossing the Channel: lower income tax for ex-pats, lower commercial rents, a deep talent pool and two international schools near the business areas of Paris. There was even a humorous swipe at their arch-rival: ‘When was the last time you thought of taking your partner for a nice weekend in Frankfurt?’

But the London bankers weren’t so easily won over. They were concerned about political uncertainty and how hard it is to fire people in France. Perhaps they had visions of Marine Le Pen brandishing a French tricolour atop the barricades of economic nationalism, promising French jobs for French workers.

Valérie and her team came here to lure (‘attract a hawk by casting a lure or decoy’) business to the City of Lights, to woo, court, tempt, enchant, charm, beguile and fascinate — all words related to seduction and witch-craft.

Did the magic work? Only time will tell. The affair has not yet been consummated.

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