The Economy of The United Kingdom

The economy of the united kingdom is really a tale of two cities, it was the best of times and it was the worst of times, it is an economy with the highest levels of foreign investment per capita in the world and it is an economy with a major poverty crisis. It is an economy that is home to the second largest financial centre in the world and yet its entire economy is smaller than that of California.

It’s this one that I really want to focus on though, the united kingdom as a country is heavily dependent on its financial services industry to a level that brings it in line with nations like Singapore and hong kong which in and of themselves are basically just giant cities full of banks.
This for the most part sounds brilliant, a strong financial services sector is hugely beneficial to a national economy. It creates thousands of extremely high paying jobs and can attract profits from all over the world to be introduced to the local economy and the United Kingdom is a great example of this.

London is home to the offices of over 500 banks from small banks with local operations in the country to major international banks like HSBC

In this video we will explore why these financial institutions decide to call London home.

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References -

Drennan, M.P., 1996. The dominance of international finance by London, New York and Tokyo. The global economy in transition

Sandford, C.T., 2015. Economics of public finance: an economic analysis of government expenditure and revenue in the United Kingdom

Lewis, M.K., 1999. International banking and offshore finance: London and the major centres. In Offshore Finance Centres and Tax Havens

Cassis, Y., 2010. Capitals of capital: the rise and fall of international financial centres 1780-2009. Cambridge University Press.

Dunnett, P., 2013. The Decline of the British Motor Industry (Routledge Revivals): The Effects of Government Policy

Amit, R., Liechtenstein, H., Prats, M.J., Millay, T. and Pendleton, L.P., 2008. Single family offices: Private wealth management in the family context

Glucksberg, L. and Burrows, R., 2016. Family offices and the contemporary infrastructures of dynastic wealth.