ABSTRACT

In the last analysis, global business comes down to international capital flows. And international capital flows require an intermediation process, which is provided by the financial institutions and markets gathered in the leading international financial centres. In the course of the last two centuries, financial institutions and markets have thus played a decisive role in the making of global business. In many ways, they could be seen as having enabled it. International financial centres provide a convenient vantage point from which to consider this role. They can be defined as the grouping together, in a given urban space, of a certain number of financial services; in a more functional way, they could be defined as a place where intermediaries coordinate financial transactions and arrange for payments to be made (Kindleberger, 1974; Roberts, 1994). A financial centre’s influence can be limited to a single country, it can extend to a region of the world, or it can be truly global and provide financial facilities to the entire planet. The makers of global business are thus the financial institutions and markets – and those who run them – located in the handful of truly international, indeed global financial centres – though the global significance of lesser centres should not be entirely dismissed.