Contemporaries and historians have highlighted London’s position asthe world’s leading financial centre, and its dominance of both tradefinancing and international capital investment at this time. The cur-rent historical literature focuses on the presence of the London StockExchange and...

Contemporaries and historians have highlighted London's position as the world's leading financial centre, and its dominance of both trade financing and international capital investment at this time.  The current historical literature focuses on the presence of the London Stock Exchange and...

The interwar years saw the rise of New York to challenge London as the world's leading provider of financial services.  This paper will show that the current explanations fail to identify a key factor in New York's rise.  The City was prevented from operating a full capacity by a capital...