By Chris Hayward
Together, London and New York can use financial and professional services to drive prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic, says Chris Hayward
London and New York are the twin pillars on which the global financial system rests. The United States is our single largest trading partner, worth over £315 billion annually. Of that, over £120 billion is financial and other business services – generating jobs, creating business, and supporting public services. The City of London Corporation has been working with both governments to launch our new office in the United States.
Our ambition is to support both British businesses expanding into the United States, and American businesses expanding into Britain.
Building on our already excellent foundations through both promotion of interests and aligning policy will be vital in the coming years.
Together, we face shared challenges from geopolitical instability, to the climate crisis, to adapting new technologies – all of which have the capacity to reshape our world.
On policy in particular, we have a chance to create a regulatory system with competitiveness at its core. That’s why we’ll be launching a new report this week – jointly with the British American Finance Alliance which represents the largest financial and professional services firms – to highlight areas of co-operation to unlock shared prosperity and security.
Whether working on Basel III reforms, building up and Voluntary Carbon Markets to improving climate disclosure standards, or sustaining and expanding the UK-US data-bridge, a joint approach will be crucial.
Whether you work in Wall Street or the City, Westminster or Washington, we are here to help.
For too long, too many people have promoted a harmful zero-sum narrative that where one financial centre wins, another loses. Such stories miss the larger picture and ignore the long history of partnership between our countries.
Addressing Parliament nearly three decades ago, President Bill Clinton marked a new chapter in what he described as our ‘extraordinary relationship’.
With the Cold War having ended and the Iron Curtain fallen, the President urged us to work together and support like-minded partners to usher in a new era of economic openness – to ‘lay the foundation for lasting prosperity’.
The President charged that ‘Economic freedom is spreading alongside political freedom, bringing with it renewed hope for a better life, rooted in the honorable and healthy competition of effort and ideas.’
In the decades since, trading restrictions have eased, financial markets have grown, and the world has become more connected.
Yet today, this post-Cold War consensus built on the free exchange of goods and ideas as a path to prosperity is being challenged.
We in the City should reject firmly the notion of isolationism or tariffs. Our own history teaches us that we succeed when we build bridges not barriers.
It is therefore crucial that we forge ahead with partnerships based upon shared values and goals, such as with the United States.
Together, the City and New York, the United Kingdom and the United States can use financial and professional services to drive prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic.
We can make the case for what openness and collaboration can achieve. This week, I will be welcoming representatives from the American Embassy to the City to discuss shared opportunities and I will continue those conversations in the United States next week.
Later this year, both of our countries will have elections. Whatever the result and whoever will be in power, the continuity of business, of trade, of our relationship will endure.
London offers New York expertise in sustainable finance, fintech, talent and more. Whilst the Big Apple offers us a huge market of customers. Together, we can shape financial and professional services to seize new opportunities and tackle the key questions of our time.
So let us work together, in partnership, and lay the foundation for lasting prosperity.
Chris Hayward is policy chairman at the City of London Corporation
