The Competitive Position of London as a Global Financial ... - Z/Yen

4.6 A Fair and Just Business Environment (6 of 14)
For a financial centre, having a fair and just business environment was seen as the
sixth most important competitive factor. This surprised us as we thought it would be
one of the most important. It might be argued that this factor did not rank higher in
importance, because the surveyed centres, London, New York, Paris and Frankfurt
are all mature financial centres. If we had asked respondents to compare centres in
less developed jurisdictions, there might have been different answers about the
factor’s importance. It would appear that this is one of those features that is, to a
greater or lesser extent, taken for granted in the four centres we investigated. Since
it is taken for granted, people seem to downplay its importance.
Chart 13 – The Importance of a Fair and Just Business Environment
Number of Respondents
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
Unimportant Of Low
Importance
Moderately
Important
29
Important Very
Important
International Banking International Other UK Banking UK Other
Critically
Important
International respondents thought that a fair and just business environment was
more important than those from the UK. We asked several of our interviewees about
this and they believe that a fair and just business environment is taken for granted in
the UK and is therefore thought of as less important by UK respondents.
Chart 14 – How the Centres Rank for Being a Fair and Just Business
Environment
Average Score
25
20
15
10
5
0
17.2
16.0
13.6
14.7
London New York City Paris Frankfurt
96% of respondents thought that London was Good or Excellent in terms of being a
fair and just environment. 92% of respondents felt that New York was Good or