Time to take the handbrake off the City and unleash growth

The Lord Mayor’s Show is a reminder that despite only being 1.12 square miles in size, there’s no limit to the City’s ambition and what it can achieve when it comes together, says Alastair King

As the scaffolding comes down outside Mansion House and the majestic State Coach returns to the safety of the London Museum following Saturday’s Lord Mayor’s Show, my work as the 696th Lord Mayor of London begins in earnest. 

The Show – a three-mile-long celebration that brought our ancient streets to life in a flurry of colour and song, drawing hundreds of thousands of people out onto the Square Mile’s pavements and millions more at home – is an annual reminder that despite only being 1.12 square miles in size, there’s no limit to the City’s ambition and what it can achieve when it comes together.

As Lord Mayor, I see my job as being cheerleader-in-chief for the UK’s financial and professional services sector, harnessing that same City-wide ambition we saw at the weekend while extolling our strengths to the world and constructively encouraging the team back home. 

For some years now, many of us who work in the financial and professional services (FPS) sector have shared the same nagging feeling – one of driving with the handbrake on. So, through this year’s mayoral theme – Growth Unleashed – my pitch is a simple one: to be bolder, think smarter, and take off the handbrake, reigniting the City’s appetite for positive risk, seizing our national edge in innovation, and supporting the many communities that make London unique. 

Growth unleashed

At its heart, Growth Unleashed is about enabling people and businesses to feel that they can fire on all cylinders. The plan has three elements.

First, regulatory reform. The financial services are rightly a key focus of the government’s new industrial strategy and will be of critical importance if ministers are to achieve the ambitions they have set out on growth. Here in the City, we want to work closely with the government to ensure the UK realises its full potential. To that end, I will be proposing a number of practical measures at the annual Financial and Professional Services Dinner on Thursday that would immediately strengthen UK public markets and, longer term, create a deeper UK capital market. 

Second, because regulatory reform can often take time, mindset reform is required now. We want to embolden and challenge industry to maximise opportunities via responsible risk taking. That means encouraging City firms to jump on planes and engage with the high growth markets that want so much of what we have to sell. It also means ensuring the UK FPS sector is habitually the early adopter of dynamic new technologies that can give it the competitive edge. 

And third, with more diaspora groups calling London home than any other city in the world, we want to amplify and celebrate each community’s remarkable contribution to the Square Mile, encouraging them to help us expand the pool of talent that will keep the City growing over the next 25 years. To do this, we’ll be establishing 15 City Belonging Networks, the first four of which – for the Muslim, Jewish, LGBT, and Armed Forces Veterans communities – will be launched by the end of this year.  

Thursday’s Financial and Professional Services Dinner will be a historic moment: the first time a woman Chancellor of the Exchequer addresses an audience at Mansion House. It also comes at a moment of great geopolitical uncertainty, both in Europe and further afield. 

Yet here in the City – thanks to our deep and abundant talent pools, respect for the rule of law, and pre-eminent expertise in areas like insurance, legal services, and foreign exchange – we have so much to celebrate and set our sights on. My commitment is to do everything I can over the next twelve months to ensure we grasp the nettle and seize the opportunities in front of us. 

Alastair King is Lord Mayor of the City of London