All aboard the 'London Abroad' single board promotional float!
A high-level executive taskforce led by Merrill Lynch’s European chairman Bob Wigley today called for the creation of a single, powerful board led by the City of London Corporation to pool the efforts of several fragmented bodies and promote London as a financial centre, in an effort to ward off the threat of more co-ordinated promotional drives by new foreign rivals.
The establishment of a new financial services representation board as an “overarching, properly resourced body, tasked with promoting London’s financial services sector overseas, anticipating strategically important trends and highlighting to a domestic audience the industry’s contribution to the UK”, is among several sweeping recommendations made by the panel.
It would be funded jointly by industry and government bodies, “potentially through streamlining existing groups”, and comprise top leaders from all walks of the financial services industry including banks, insurers and fund managers.
Wigley, chairman of Merrill Lynch’s business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, was asked in June by London Mayor Boris Johnson to lead the panel to see how London can sustain its position as the world’s leading financial centre. The panel also includes Fidelity International president Simon Fraser, Aviva chief executive Andrew Moss, Philip Yea, chief executive of private equity firm 3i Group, and Barclays chief executive John Varley.
The panel, which canvassed the views of 100 chief and senior executives across the financial services sector, highlighted the array of London promotional bodies from the Greater London Authority and the City of London Corporation to the Financial Services Authority, the London Stock Exchange and International Financial Services London.
The panel said in its report published today: “The competition from other centres exposes the fragmented nature of London’s efforts to protect and promote its own financial centre. An array of private and government institutions work at this task with considerable energy. Yet these groups find it difficult to achieve the full impact that one overarching, properly resourced body might deliver.”
It highlighted the more”strategic, co-ordinated and assertive” promotion efforts by newer rival centres such as Dubai and Singapore.
Among the new financial services board’s proposed responsibilities would be international brand development and strategic planning. On the branding front, the board would draw up plans to promote London as a centre for listings "independent of the London Stock Exchange's own efforts, given the growing number of potential listing venues".
The report also identifies the need to boost London's infrastructure, highlighting in particular capacity concerns at Heathrow Airport, and improving the competitiveness and predictabiliity of the UK's tax regime. It proposes a new industry panel of experts to liaise with UK Treasury and Revenue and Customs officials before consultation on new tax policy.
Johnson said: "I will pull out all the stops to protect London's position as the world's premier financial centre and emerge from the downturn stronger than ever. On top of establishing a single body to oversee the work that needs doing, I will not stop until I lobby whoever it takes to remove the obstacles that are putting London's global reputation at risk from the new kids on the block chomping at our heels."
Richard Saunders, chief executive of the Investment Management Association, the trade body for the UK's asset management industry, welcomed the report, saying: "The report rightly highlights the need for improvements to the UK tax regime if London is to compete on a level playing field with centres like Dublin and Luxembourg which have succeeded in attracting funds away from the UK."
--write vahuja@efinancialnews.com
del.icio.us
Digg
Newsvine
reddit
StumbleUpon