Huw Jones

LONDON, (Reuters) – New York continues to lead the list of top financial centers worldwide, while London is losing ground to more competitive counterparts in Asia and the United States, according the Global Financial Centres Index, (GFCI), on Thursday.

In partnership with China Development Institute, Z/Yen Group created an index that showed U.S. financial capital occupying the top spot. It scored 759 points. This is a drop of 3 points from 6 months ago.

Rankings are based upon surveys and 150 factors. Quantitative measures come from The Economist Intelligence Unit (World Bank), the OECD, and the United Nations.

London maintained second place even though it dropped 14 points, to 726. It would be behind Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Shanghai next time, as well as Singapore, given their performance (see tableau).

London now ranks as the European’s only top-10 centre after Shenzhen has replaced Paris at 10th.

GFCI indicated that Russia’s invasion would have an impact on future rankings of Moscow and St Petersburg. These two cities were ranked 50th and 110th at this point.

Graphic: GFCI index for March 2022: https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/mkt/jnpwekyaxpw/GFCI%20rankings%20March%202022.PNG

London’s position in the European Union has been closely scrutinized since Britain’s exit from it. The EU has largely cut off UK finance sector.

GFCI’s fintech rating index, a sector Britain considers important in keeping London attractive, has New York, Shanghai, and Beijing as the top and second places, respectively. San Francisco, Beijing, and San Francisco took the third and fourth spots.

Banks have called for Britain’s assistance in boosting the capital’s competivity, given that listing rules were already relaxed.

Although the UK’s finance ministry intends to grant regulators a formal competition remit in order to keep banks safe and consumers protected, their number one priority would be keeping markets ordered, stable, and secure.

Bank of England Deputy governor Sam Woods declared this week, “a primary objective to encourage competitiveness is really a terrible idea.”