BANKERS WILL GO ELSEWHERE?

We are constantly being told that if we put limits on the earnings of the banks or individual bankers that we risk them going elsewhere. What rubbish!

The banks and the other financial institutions are located in London because of geography not for any fiscal reason. The UK market place is convenient as it straddles the "opening hours" of all of most the world major markets, they can do business with the Middle East in the morning, Europe and Africa at lunchtime and the USA in the afternoon. The only other major markets not trading whilst London is open are Hong Kong, China.and perhaps you could include Australia.

This fact is the other major reason that it is unlikely that we, the British Isles, will move to a European time zone as to do so would erode some of this advantage. At the moment we can trade with the USA markets for at least one hour longer than the rest of Europe.

Unless someone is going to physically move the UK then we don't have to worry about the banks and other markets moving elsewhere there is no elsewhere. The threat that they will relocate to another county in response to caps on their earnings or higher taxation is absolute rubbish as they will loose far more than us.