Despite a slick campaign to lure companies from London to Berlin after Britain voted to leave the European Union, some of those which have moved say it is not as easy as it first appeared.

Following the referendum decision in June, Germany’s liberal Free Democrats hired a truck to drive around London with a billboard declaring, ‘Dear start-ups, Keep calm and move to Berlin’.

An ironic reference to a popular poster entreating Britons to Keep Calm and Carry On at the outbreak of World War II, it was soon followed by the opening of an official Berlin marketing office in London.

Two London based companies have already taken the plunge. Web-design company MBJ London and real-estate investment platform Brickvest had already planned to open offices in Berlin but were jolted into speeding up their investments by Britons’ June 23 decision.

The motivation: to limit their London exposure in case of a hard Brexit – where Britain loses access to the single market. The two firms cite access to talent and the low cost of living among Berlin’s benefits, as well as a hotline to help start-ups get employee visas. But they urged the city to lower language and regulatory hurdles.

“If it wants to become the leader in fintech then these are the steps it needs to take, otherwise it will get a few companies but it will not become the hub,” said Brickvest co-founder Thomas Schneider. Brickvest is building a back office in Berlin and plans to grow its staff from five to 15 people over the next six months. But Schneider said the German financial regulator BaFin was too conservative and the fact that all documents must be translated into German to apply for a banking licence was off-putting for companies like his, which employs 10 nationalities.

MBJ plans to build up its operational team in Berlin and more than double its headcount. Management will also move from London.

But it took the company around two months to set up base compared with some three days in London, said MBJ’s Chief Operating Officer Toni Horn. The start-up needed to get documents approved by a notary and had to go to court to get the company registered.

Setting up a bank account was tricky, as was finding office space, with most landlords offering rental contracts for three to five years - an impractical time-frame for a start-up that may outgrow the space within a year, or fold.

Instead, MBJ has rented an office at co-working space WeWork at Potsdamer Platz, a desolate no-man’s land during the Cold War that has become one of the capital’s busiest commercial centres.

Since the Brexit vote, the city government’s marketing agency Berlin Partner has helped five companies move from London and received some 40 specific inquiries, mainly from start-ups founded three to five years ago in the fintech and IT sectors.

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