Conclusions: A global overview from a geographical perspective

The chapter summarizes observations made in the preceding chapters, and complements them from a geographical perspective, putting developments in the eight countries and eleven financial centres covered in the book in a global context. It starts by looking at the elite of the financial sector, comparing the world’s top centres of investment banking and asset management. Next, it broadens its focus by reviewing trends and patterns of employment in the financial and business services sector as a whole. The following section offers a glimpse of offshore finance and its development since the crisis. In addition, it provides an overview and comparison of developments in fintech and their potential impact on the global map of financial centres. The concluding section considers new geographical ways of conceptualizing relationships among financial centres, financial and business services, and offshore finance, and ends with suggestions for future research.