London wins top financial centre title once again as gap with New York widens

By Gemma Acton

London has held onto top spot in the latest ranking of global financial centres as the gap with second placed New York City (NYC) widens, according to the most recent iteration of the semi-annual report released on Monday.

Despite the looming threat of Brexit and fears that the city will cede a significant amount of financial companies and employees who are driven out by either regulatory stipulations or concerns over changes that may detract from the city’s appeal, London’s tally has only lost two points since the previous report. This is the smallest fall of any of the top 10 centres.

Meantime, North American cities, namely regional leader NYC which has lost 24 points since March and others including San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and Vancouver, have taken a much larger hit over the period, with the report’s authors pointing to fears over U.S. trade as the possible key reason.

Western Europe returned a mixed bag of results with boosts for Frankfurt, Dublin, Paris and Amsterdam – all cities seen as key potential beneficiaries of Brexit - while other more traditional finance hubs, including Geneva, Zurich and Luxembourg, fell.

Another area seeing a broad-based fall was Asia-Pacific whose six cities in the top ten list fell across the board, led by Singapore and Tokyo which lost the most points. Its two highest ranked cities continued their tussle for regional dominance with Hong Kong managing to sneak ahead of Singapore to capture third place – however, this by a margin of only a meagre two points on a scale that runs to 1,000.