City connectivity in the office networks of the world’s largest banking firms

ABSTRACT

This visualisation specifies a possible map of international financial centres (IFCs) at the nexus of relational approaches to financial centres and approaches looking at the geographies of corporate organisation in finance. We chart interactions between the offices of 75 of the world’s largest banking firms and aggregate these at the city scale to estimate cities’ centrality in global finance. The three most connected cities are Hong Kong, New York and London but the map, above all, shows overlapping polycentric patterns. The map is intended as a starting point for critical interrogation and formative research into finance and space.

KEYWORDS:

• International financial centres
• world city network
• producer services firms
• financial services firms
• global banking
• Hong Kong
• London
• New York

JEL:

• F36
• P25

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).