Hedge funds and banks have hit out against UK PM Burnham's plan to end the use of non-compete clauses in employment contracts and warned it would damage competitiveness, according to FT

Labour-market reform proposals of this kind follow a familiar sequence: a government floats an intervention, the affected industry organises public opposition through the financial press, and the eventual policy lands diluted, delayed, or with carve-outs for senior staff. Non-compete restrictions are not novel territory; comparable moves in other jurisdictions have tended to settle into limits on duration and scope rather than outright bans, precisely because employers in finance argue garden leave and restraint clauses are how they protect client books and trading know-how when staff move between competitors. The transmission channel is sector-specific: banks and hedge funds are the employers with the most to lose from free staff mobility, since desk-level revenue follows the individual rather than the institution, which is why this lobby is leading the pushback rather than the broader business community. The prior form on such consultations is a long runway: formal consultation, drafting, and secondary legislation, with plenty of off-ramps. What is worth watching is whether the proposal survives contact with the consultation process intact and whether the Treasury or regulators signal sympathy with the industry's competitiveness argument, which has historically been the pivot point.