That snowy Thursday, the morning of the e.i/FT/City of London/Cass Business School/British American Project discussion “The City versus Wall Street: Who’s Ahead?” my own newspaper, The Independent, had “Spend, Spend, Spend” as its high-drama cover-line. It was a London story, about the extraordinary order of money that was being earned and spent in the capital. There were billionaires, oligarchs and property prices of course. But above all it was about The City and the life that fed on it. City salaries and bonuses – the £4 bn. being handed out this spring – and the success that underwrote them. The success that meant London, on a number of crucial indices, was moving ahead of New York as the world’s No. 1 international financial centre.

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