Lord Mayor touts city as home to more scientists and engineers than bankers and insurers
Rt Honourable, The Lord Mayor of London, Professor Michael Mainelli
First published FDi Intelligence, January 2024
For many international businesses, a pre-Brexit City of London brought them into the heart of the European market. Unsurprisingly, Brexit sparked fears that London’s position as a global finance centre would become obsolete as tens of thousands of jobs went to competing centres across Europe. What role would London play in the global financial world? Who would we be? Despite dire predictions, the City of London is thriving. Employment in the Square Mile has risen from just under 550,000 in 2019 to more than 600,000 jobs today, and London remains the second most important global financial centre after New York, according to the annual ranking by London- based think tank Z/Yen Group.
Although things are not as bad as they could be, they could be much better. The UK remains the number one location in Europe for FDI, but government figures show FDI project numbers in the latest financial year were down more than 25% compared with the year leading up to the Brexit referendum.
How do we fix this? Since Brexit, London has made a fundamental pivot from ‘buying mode’ to ‘selling mode’ when it comes to FDI. We now need to get on the front foot to promote all the advantages of doing business in London: dressing the shop window, if you like. That’s how we’ll pull in the modern equivalents of JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, as we did in the 1970s and 1980s. We grabbed them early on in their international expansion and we have to do the same with the up and coming powerhouses of today, not just in the financial sector, but also tech, life sciences, engineering and more.
Solutions centre
My mayoral theme is Connect To Prosper. The aim is to leverage the power of the City’s connectivity to provide solutions to the world’s largest problems, changing the perception of London from a resource centre to a solutions centre that can drive greater investment and influence. The Square Mile is home to 40 learned societies, 70 higher education institutions and 130 research institutes. We actually have more scientists and engineers than we do bankers and insurers. While the City is known for its leadership in financial and professional services, we’re also the biggest tech centre in the country.
The City of London has the brainpower to be a leader in the fast-emerging sectors of the future. We’re already seeing the effects of this with increased foreign investment in the UK tech scene. Open AI, the US company behind the artificial intelligence super-platform ChatGPT, has chosen London for its first international office. Venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz also chose the city to kick off its international expansion citing the UK’s hospitable climate for blockchain start- ups. These are the companies that will lead the world’s response to the challenges of the future, and they’re setting up shop right here.
The pandemic shone a light on the UK’s life sciences capabilities and great investment opportunities. In 2022 the Canary Wharf Group granted planning permission to develop a 23- storey life sciences building providing 823,000 square feet of workspace for leading biotechnology, genomics and medical technology companies. This is in addition to life science ecosystems in White City, King’s Cross and Whitechapel where firms cluster around the four major science universities of King’s College London, UCL, Queen Mary’s and Imperial College, utilising the talent drawn to our City’s rich amenities. The City supports an initiative led by 10 major construction and property firms called ‘Constructing Science: Offices to Labs’, which provides a rigorous standard to underpin the conversion of work spaces.
With the number of leading life science investors, real-estate experts and architects in the Square Mile, the City of London Corporation has convened thought leaders to tackle key barriers to investment in the sector, namely the design complexity of life science buildings. This will widen the scope for life science companies to invest in London, widening the scope beyond the common choices of Cambridge and Oxford.
The City of London will most certainly remain a leading finance centre. But to unlock its full potential to solve the world’s greatest challenges, government, regulators and the private sector must work together to open the door to a more diverse Square Mile.