Chris Rowley

The View | Move over London, hello Hong Kong-Beijing-Shanghai as the world’s top financial centre?

Chris Rowley says the hunt for the city that will take over London’s mantle as the top global financial centre has been unduly focused on Europe, when Asia is the region to watch

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Demonstrators fly a Union Jack flag and an EU flag outside the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, central London, in October 2017. London has been ranked as the top global financial centre, but its post-Brexit fate remains unclear. Photo: AFP

Chris Rowley

Published: 2:00pm, 15 May 2018Updated: 10:34pm, 15 May 2018

There have been fierce debates in the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe since the Brexit vote about what might happen to the City of London in terms of its position as the world’s pre-eminent financial services centre. These arguments by commentators, practitioners, policymakers and academics disappointingly, but not unexpectedly, have been conducted in a simple, narrow, extremely eurocentric, even ethnocentric, manner which treats the subject as a zero-sum game.

Too many commentators seem to think the “best” and “most obvious” – and by implication “only” – competitors to London’s financial crown are in the European Union. To shed some light on this narrowness, we can look at the widely used Global Financial Centre Index, which ranks all the major centres. Its latest report continues to rank London first but the EU’s most commonly mentioned alternatives ranked poorly. Frankfurt was 20th (down nine places), Paris 24th (up two), Dublin 31st (down one) and Amsterdam 50th (down 17).

A trader from BGC, a global brokerage company in London's Canary Wharf financial district, reacts as European stock markets open on June 24, 2016, after Britain voted to leave the European Union. Photo: Reuters

Interestingly, too many senior bank executives, especially vastly overpaid US ones, fly into various EU destinations on very short visits and naively proclaim how they could do business in city X, Y or Z. Yet, this is more banker rhetoric than reality. Being shuttled around on closely choreographed and micromanaged visits in these cities bears no connection to the everyday realities of living and working in the location being lauded.