London as an International Financial Centre 1

In the 1980s while much of British manufacturing industry languished and declined the City of London was paraded as the international success story of a Thatcherite decade. It had succeeded in carving itself an important niche in the postmodern international division of labour where services and not industry allegedly reigned supreme. Radical deregulatory reforms such as the abolition of exchange controls and the Big Bang liberalisation of the Stock Exchange had served to enhance further the City’s international role. ²