Despite the doom and gloom of warnings over the 2016 referendum that London would no longer keep its spot as the world's top finance hub after Brexit, the British capitol still maintains its place on the throne, Reuters reported on Tuesday.
London was "extraordinarily resilient", according to property developer Stuart Lipton as quoted by Reuters, who has wagered $1.2bn that London would remain at the top of global investment worldwide.
Mr Lipton said: “London is extraordinarily resilient and its future as a finance centre is secure because what we have here is unique,
London has overtaken many sectors of investment in the first half of 2019, conquering the global market for fintech investment and expanding its dominant market share of foreign exchanges. The UK also surpassed the United States as the largest hub for interest rate swaps trading, to the chagrin of European leaders such as former French president Francois Hollande.
Will EU Finance Hubs Overtake London? Not Quite.
Speaking to Sputnik, Richard Wellings, deputy research director at the British think-tank the Institute of Economic Affairs, said that it was "very unlikely" that other national capitals such as Paris could knock London from its top spot in global finance.
He said at the time: "The financial sector is a complex ecosystem and firms rely on other firms clustering close by. These things develop over many decades; you can't just take one financial center and move it somewhere else. A few firms may move, but we aren't going to get a huge cluster like we have in London.
He added that post-Brexit, there would be "opportunities for London to do well" if the UK removed more of the "hugely costly EU red tape that's holding the City of London back", adding that fiercer competition would come from finance hubs such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai, as well as other emerging markets.
Emerging markets have also become a key ally of the City of London, with Lord Mayor Peter Estlin embarking on an official visit to Africa to discuss London's future relationship with numerous markets such as Kenya, South Africa and others. The City launched the visits as part of the UK's bid to ink numerous post-continuity trade agreements after leaving the EU.
— Lord Mayor of London (@citylordmayor) October 14, 2019
The British capital has also kept its crown as the global green finance hub in terms of quality, according a September report from Z/Yen and Finance Watch. Despite this, multiple European capitals were quickly approaching the UK's throne due to London's failure to issue sovereign green bonds.
USD to Chinese Yuan exchanges surpassed GBP to Euro trading in January at $73bn (£55bn), making dollar to yuan exchanges the seventh most traded currency pair in London, according to the Bank of England Foreign Exchange Joing Standing Committee. Turnover from renmenbi clearing houses was boosted 17 percent in the previous fiscal year and kept London as the largest Forex trading centre globally at $2.6tn each day.
