he home country), are subjected in the home country to equivalent regulation and supervision. It is, therefore, purported by many that as Brexit will remove the opportunity to ‘passport’ from the UK’s financial services regime, third party equivalence can provide an adequate solution, which will allow financial services firms to continue with minimal disruption. This, naturally perhaps, has endeared itself to British negotiators as the preferential option for establishing future trading relations with the European Union. This is set out in Reynolds and Donegan’s journal article on the future opportunities and challenges that Brexit presents. The article clearly establishes that a great many of the EU’s sectorial legislation relating to financial services makes provision for access to EU markets and customers for financial services institutions when an equivalent regulatory regime is applied in that country. Nevertheless, crucial to our analysis of Brexit’s impact is the fact that equivalence regimes are applicable by virtue of existing EU legal instruments in many cases but not in all cases.

There are further drawbacks to a devout reliance on equivalence as a solution to post-Brexit market access problems. Chief among the concerns surrounding equivalence is the fact that equivalence is a recognition that is granted unilaterally by the European Union and, furthermore, that such recognition can be revoked by the European Union with relative ease and with as little as thirty days’ notice. The status quo of the regime is, therefore, perhaps palatable to some but certainly sub-optimal. This essay advocates the position that pursuing the ‘equivalence’ regime is a viable option and one that should be extensively explored by negotiators, concurrent with an examination and exploration of ways in which the negative aspects of the ‘equivalence’ regime can be mitiga