Paragon Banking Group PLC

Chancellor John Healey has summoned the bosses of Britain's biggest banks to a pre-budget summit next Tuesday, amid industry expectations of a tax raid later this month. Sky News has learnt that the chief executives of lenders including Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group and NatWest Group have been asked to attend, with the bosses of Santander UK and Nationwide also understood to have been invited. It will be the first such in-person meeting Healey has held with UK bank chiefs since he replaced Rachel Reeves as chancellor in July, and comes ahead of his inaugural major fiscal event towards the end of the month. Banking industry fears are growing that he will hike taxes on the sector by billions of pounds a year to fund spending commitments or tax cuts elsewhere, and sector chiefs have embarked on a frenetic lobbying campaign to head off a tax raid. Earlier this week, Sky News revealed that Revolut was among a pack of challenger banks urging the chancellor to remove the threat of an immediate tax raid, with a dozen mid-tier lenders signing a letter calling on him to lift the threshold at which the corporation tax surcharge applies to banks from £100m to £500m; the signatories also included Monzo, Paragon Bank and Shawbrook. Healey has not yet met the bosses of the UK's biggest banks, but has held face-to-face talks with Jamie Dimon, chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, who has raised the prospect of cancelling a major new UK headquarters if international banks are hit with higher UK taxes.