England's High Court on Tuesday gave Aviva, Britain's second largest insurer, approval to transfer around £9 billion in assets to a new Irish company just before the starting gun is fired on Brexit.
The move is part of a wider withdrawal of business and money by financial companies seeking to keep contracts and policies within the European Union even after Britain departs.
Brexit formally takes effect on March 29.
London has yet to agree a divorce settlement with the bloc but banks and insurers are shifting hundreds of billions of pounds in assets regardless of the form Brexit takes, reversing decades of European financial market integration and chipping away at the City of London's dominance of it.
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