尽管英国如今充满悲观情绪——高通胀、债务上升、增长乏力、伊朗战争压力，以及一个多数下却显得停摆的政府——伦敦仍是全球金融核心，处理“十亿欧元换兹罗提”交易和复杂利率押注，外国银行在该市持有全球最高资产规模。伦敦再次与纽约并驾齐驱，并且一项专门指数显示其在12个国际金融维度中领先7项。

投资热度表明情绪转向：摩根大通正在金丝雀码头建设更大的欧洲总部，花旗计划在其大厦投入15亿美元改造，Jane Street 与 Citadel 正在激进扩租金融城办公空间，阿波罗、布鲁克菲尔德及另一家美国买家也在接管英国保险公司，Schroders亦被收购。尽管经历十年冲击和“脱欧”担忧，包括最高达232,000个金融岗位可能消失的预测，这些迹象仍在持续显现。

数据显示韧性：金融业就业在2017年为110万，如今仍为110万，且更多岗位集中在高薪更集中的金融城核心区。该行业现实时点值已达2240亿英镑，较脱欧后初期增长20%，约占GDP的8%，并以每年930亿英镑的服务净出口量位居各国之首，政策不应把金融成功视为可惩罚对象，而应保持其在历史网络和跨大陆时区优势上的领先地位。

Despite Britain's gloomy backdrop—rising inflation, rising debt, weak growth, the Iran war, and a government majority that appears paralyzed—London still functions as a top global financial core, handling billion-euro-for-zloty trades and complex interest-rate bets, with foreign banks holding the largest asset share there. London again rivals New York, and a specialist index places it top in 7 of 12 dimensions of international finance.

New investment confirms the mood shift: JPMorgan is building a larger European headquarters in Canary Wharf, Citigroup is spending $1.5bn to refurbish its tower, and firms like Jane Street and Citadel are aggressively taking new City space while Apollo, Brookfield, and another U.S. buyer are taking over British insurers, with Schroders also being acquired. This occurs despite a decade of shocks and Brexit concerns, including the claim that up to 232,000 financial jobs could be lost.

The data indicate resilience: finance employment was 1.1m in 2017 and is still 1.1m today, with more concentrated in the higher-paid Square Mile segment. The sector now contributes £224bn in real terms, about 20% higher and around 8% of GDP, while exporting £93bn a year in services more than any country, so policy should avoid punitive taxation and restriction impulses and instead preserve London's edge rooted in longstanding global networks and a transcontinental time-zone advantage.

Source: The bright bit of Britain

Subtitle: scrapped for bits of its business after the Brexit vote, but hardly any jobs actually ended up needing to move to satisfy EU regulators. JPMorgan is said to be now shifting some of those that did go to Paris back to London again. Less expected is how much City bigwigs praise good decisions by an otherwise hapless Labour government. Rather than junking sensible reforms begun by their Tory predecessors, Treasury ministers have forged on with them. So Britain's stockmarket-listing regime has been simplified and pension funds are being nudged, rightly, to invest more in risky assets (though outright mandates to do so would overstep the mark). A much-mooted levy on bank profits was dropped from last year's budget, encouraging bosses to put spades in the ground for their new buildings. Regulators have cheerfully waved through the spate of cross-border acquisitions, drawing a stark contrast to their obstructive counterparts in the EU . But the government has more to do. Investors the world over are more interested in Europe, and more worried about overexposure to America, than they have been in years. It doesn't hurt that hiring junior staff in London is a lot cheaper than in New York: in relative terms London now looks like a bargain. Britain's government should take advantage of this and make it easier for rich financiers to move there, without facing taxes that prompt a complete overhaul of their personal investments. Having made a fuss about abolishing the "non-dom" tax regime, which aimed to do approximately that, Labour politicians would need a new name for a more attractive regime. "Growth visa" has a ring to it. The government should also press regulators to help the City seize a historic opportunity. Britain, along with the rest of Europe, urgently needs to make huge investments in defence, upgrading battered infrastructure and the data centres required in order to compete in artificial intelligence. Public debts are already so high that much of the capital for this will have to come from private sources. Loosening securitisation rules-which govern how easy it is for insurers and pension funds to provide this capital-would help ensure that it is City bankers, lawyers and myriad others who co-ordinate its deployment.

Dateline: The Economist May 2nd 2026