The worrying doubts about London as a place for business

LONDON’S financial dominance is under siege. In the City not a day goes by without senior executives with serious media pull shouting about how completely useless our regulators are and what a dreadful country we are for business in general because of it

There’s currently so much open hostility towards London it’s hard not to think seasoned executive Albert Manifold (CEO of CRH PLC), technology titan Masayoshi Son (CEO of SoftBank and majority owner of microchip giant Arm Holdings), trainee technology titan Nikolay Storonsky (CEO of challenger bank Revolut) and others don’t have a point in dismissing London as a competitive financial centre, and as undeserving of their businesses.

British fintech company Revolut has been waiting over two years for the Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) to award it a full UK banking licence. Revolut CEO Storonsky hasn’t held back in venting his frustration. He’s mentioned waiting for emails and letters “for months” and stated, “it’s hard to do business in the UK”.

So why do we care about the toings and froings between a multi-billion-pound UK fintech company and our regulators? Simply because other companies considering London as a home will be watching the process, whatever the outcome.