sign in sign up
<<
Home , Financial centre, Headquarters

Financial Centres: What, Where Financial centres and Why? • What are they? There are many different types and classifications based on their functions. • Where are they located and why are they located there. They have certain location characteristics and are not situated randomly.

A general definition of financial The end of geography? centres • Financial centres are geographical locations with • With improvements in information an agglomeration of (including communication technology, some have argued that , branches, subsidiaries) and other can locate anywhere and that computers financial intermediaries. can perform the functions of financial centres making them obsolete. • Their general functions are to: • Although it is true that a is a • Balance savings and investments over time “space of flows,” its location is still important • Transfer money from savers to • Recent technology along with the • Act as a medium-of-exchange internationalisation of finance have not done away • Act as an interspatial store-of-value with financial centres but have simply changed their functions and their degree of specialisation.

Financial Hierarchy Financial Hierarchy

• Financial centres are part of a hierarchical • North America provides an example of this organisation of finance, communications hierarchy. and management. These form a spatial • is a regional financial centre. hierarchy which consists of: • and are national centres. • Regional centres • is an international centre • National centres • International centres

1 International financial centres International financial centres

• In order for a centre to be considered an • New York City is an example of an international financial centre, it must have a international financial centre, whereas concentration of all of the following five banking activities: is not because it does not have a • Financing foreign trade, such as issuing for significant concentration of all of these import financial activities. • Currency exchange, such as foreign exchange (FOREX) trading • Transferring funds across political boundaries (foreign currency deposits) • Foreign borrowing and lending • Foreign investment

International financial centres International financial centres

• Five other meanings for “international • International financial centres can be further financial centre” are: characterised as follows: • A city which facilitates domestic capital-flow to the • A source of global financial influence outside world (, New York City) • The zenith of a hierarchy in a • A city, due to its location and facilities, serves as a foreign lending and trading centre for foreign • A market with peculiar regulations currencies (, ) • A geographic area for financial operations • A place, due to its favourable laws and banking regulations, acts as a haven for foreign lending and • An external currency market borrowing (Bahamas, , Channel Islands) • These are often called “offshore” financial centres.

Offshore financial centres OFCs: Primary centres (OFCs) • Four types of OFCs are: • A primary centre is the most developed • Primary centres offshore financial centre. • Booking centres • Primary centres play a dominant • Funding centres intermediary role in their market area. • Collections centres • They are the hub for international banking and finance in their market area and provide a variety of .

2 OFCs: Booking centres OFCs: Funding centres

• A booking centre channels outside funds in • Funding centres channel outside offshore that its intermediation is for nonresidents. funds into local areas. • Booking centres need only to meet the basic • Examples: , Singapore requirements for financial infrastructure. This is because their main drawing cards are their highly favourable tax systems. • Examples: Bahamas, Cayman Islands

OFCs: Collection centres Host centres

• Collection centres differ from funding • Another type of financial centre is the host centre. centres in that they accumulate and channel These attract a large number of foreign financial funds from within their market to outside from many countries which enhances their own financial infrastructure. areas. • The host centre is not an isolated category. There • They have market areas with high surpluses are overlaps with the other categories. A regional, due to low absorptive capacity. national, or international centre may be a host • Example: Bahrain centre.

Source countries of foreign banks in six largest U.S. international financial centres

3 Global financial hierarchy (based on 16 variables)

Level 1 Level 3 • London • Basle • New York • • Chicago Level 2 • Dusseldorf • • Hong Kong • • • • • • City • • • • Rome • • Sao Paulo • Singapore • • Toronto • Vienna • Zurich

London’s financial district An even more specific definition of financial centres • Geographically speaking, so far financial centres have been treated as whole cities or places. Yet these agglomerations occur in even more narrowly defined places. Though they may be part of a network that is global in scale, financial centres generally occupy a specific, compact area within a city.

Toronto’s financial district ’s new financial district

4 Lujiazui financial district (Shanghai- ) Why are financial centres where they are? • Many variables influence the present location of financial centres. These include: • Historical factors • Political factors • Economic geographical factors

Historical factors Historical factors

• Many of today’s financial centres were/are • Since finance is relatively location conservative, important mercantile cities. Finance was involved due to its agglomeration economies, cities that with distance trade because of the uncertainty contained financial communities in the past tend to of import trade. Many commercial centres still have them today. Financial communities even became financial centres as merchants and tend to be located in the same area within their industrialists moved into finance. This was a respective cities. common trend. • Example: “Sqaure Mile” (London), Lower • Examples: , , , , (New York City), Bay St. (Toronto) Amsterdam, London, New York • Exception: Shanghai (Le Bund to Lujiazui)

Historical factors Hegemony

• The location of financial hegemony can be Agro-industrial edge associated with the hegemonic power of a particular nation-state. Commercial edge Hegemonic • According to Immanuel Wallerstein, a Power hegemonic power is a nation-state that has Financial edge simultaneous industrial, commercial and financial supremacy in the world-system. Time

5 Hegemony Hegemony

• Three nation-states have been hegemonic • Notably, London, New York and to a lesser powers during the 500 year history of the degree Amsterdam, are still important capitalist world-system. financial centres possibly because of their • United Provinces of the (1625- enduring finance. 1672) anchored by Amsterdam • (1815-73) anchored by • Is going to be the next hegemonic London power with Hong Kong or Shanghai- • (1945-1967) anchored by New Pudong as its hegemonic city? York City

Political Factors Economic geographical factors

• Political factors play an important role in the • A financial centre allows for easier location of financial centres. This is because in order for one to operate as efficiently as possible mediation of financial activity over space. there are certain political requirements. These include: • n – 1 links as opposed to n ( n – 1 ) / 2 links • Free market environment • Some political independence • Minimum non-prudential banking regulations • Free entry of foreign banks and bankers • Strong legal systems (property rights, contract enforcement, functioning court system, bankruptcy processes) • Peacetime environment

Factors affecting Economic geographical factors concentration/dispersal in the financial city system • With the internationalisation of finance, one • Whether financial centres concentrate or disperse factor that still influences the location of is mainly due to the following factors: financial centres are the time zones. • Size of financial communities • For example, the three largest centres, London, • Need for reducing uncertainty New York and Tokyo, are all in significantly • Degree of localisation of investment opportunities different time zones allowing for a global • Amount of information required in relation to its value organisation of finance. • Size of regional markets • Financial centres in general are situated in such • State of communications a way so as to maintain 24hr electronic trading.

6 Factors affecting the spatial form of financial districts within cities “It may be said that three-quarters of all transactions in mining shares come under the head of gambling, • Financial centres tend to take the form of compact pure and simple” (Curle, 1902). agglomerations. This is because of the following: • Agglomeration economies provide a vast array of “The promoter forms a : he issues a critical knowledge and services prospectus in flowery language, and to it attaches • Banks want to tap similar markets the report of a dishonest expert, or the report of an • The need for face-to-face contact because of: honest one with unfavourable points left out” • Uncertainty (Curle, 1902). • The need for trust • Non-programmable decision making

Conclusion References

• Castells, M. (2000) Grassrooting The Space of Flows. In J. O. Wheeler et al. eds. • Financial centres are locations with an agglomeration of Cities in the Telecommunications Age: The Fracturing of Geographies. New York: financial institutions. Routledge, 18-27. • Code, W. R. (1991) Information flows and the processes of attachment and projection: • There are many different types such as regional, national, the case of financial intermediaries. In S. D. Brunn and T. R. Leinbach, eds. Collapsing Space and Time: Geographic Aspects of Communication and Information. London: international, onshore, offshore, and host centres. Harper Collins Academic, 111-131. • They are located where they are because of a variety of • Curle, J. H. (1902) The Gold Mines of the World, 2nd Ed. London: Waterlow and Sons. • Dicken, P. (2003) Global Shift: Reshaping the Global Economic Map in the 21st historical, political and economic geographical factors. Century. New York: Guilford Press. • Gad, G. (1999) Downtown and Toronto: Distinct Places with Much in • The locations of financial centres are still important Common. Canadian Journal of Regional Science 22, No.1, 2. http://80- www.hil.unb.ca.proxy.lib.uwo.ca:2048/Texts/CJRS/bin/get.cgi?directory=Spring- because of the types of functions that they perform and the Summer99/&filename=Gad.htm 19/03/04. functions that give rise to them. • Gehrig, T. (1998). Cities and the Geographay of Financial Centers. http://www.vwl.uni- freiburg.de/fakultaet/erwien/multimedia/centers.pdf 11/02/04. • Kaufman, G. G. (2000) Emerging Economies and International Financial Centers. http://www.sba.luc.edu/research/wpapers/001101.pdf 08/01/04.

References (continued)

• Kindleberger, C. P. (1974) The Formation of Financial Centres: A Study in Comparative . Princeton Studies in International Finance no. 36. • Kindleberger, C. P. (1996) World Econonic Primacy: 1500-1990. New York: Oxford Universty press. • O hUallachain, B. (1994) Foreign Banking in the American Urban System of Financial Organisation. Economic Geography 70, 206-228. http://www.jstor.org/cgibin/jstor/printpage/00130095/ap010283/01a00010/0.pdf?userID [email protected]/018dd5533b005011adbf5&backcontext=table-of- contents&config=jstor&dowhat=Acrobat&0.pdf 17/02/04. • Olds. K. (1997) Globalizing Shanghai: the ‘Global Intelligence Corp’ and the building of Pudong. Cities, 14, No. 2, 109-123. http://scholarsportal.info/pdflinks/04022317490824256.pdf 17/02/04. • Park, Y. S. and M. Essayad, eds. International Banking and Financial Centres. Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers. • Wallerstein, I. (1983) The Three Instances of Hegemony in the History of the Capitalist World-Economy. International Journal of Comparative Sociology 24 (1-2), 100-108.

7