EURO IMPACT ON EUROPE

Euro Impact on Europe

Euro Impact on Europe

Overview of the study

This report is on the topic “what impact has the Euro had on the respective positions of London and Frankfurt as financial centres in Europe?” It based on the research by Kathy Pain on 'Spaces of practice in advanced business services: rethinking London-Frankfurt relations' and uses the original interview transcripts to justify the rationale for using semi structured interviews as the dominant research method.

Introduction

The turn of the twenty-first century saw the re-emergence of public and academic debates about the centrality of London as Europe's pre-eminent international financial centre (IFC) and the wider reconfiguration of European financial geographies. This was sparked by the EU agenda to develop a Europe-wide financial market, the introduction of the Euro currency, and the first attempts to create a Pan- European exchange.

Objectives of the study

The research focuses on

"Comparing London and Frankfurt as World Cities: A Relational Study of Contemporary Urban Change"

"London and Frankfurt as World Cities: Changing Local-Global Relations

Spaces of Practice

The purpose of the study

This project report sets out on ; “What impact the euro has had on the respective positions of London and Frankfurt as financial centers in Europe” and will to use the set of interview transcripts from the original study to evaluate the competition or supports of the two cities as key players in Europe concerning the Euro.

Literature review

According to Pain (2000; 2001) in-depth research with financial institutions and stake holders in each city pre-euro indicated that the relationship between London and Frankfurt is based more on cooperation and strong network relations between two cities than competition.

For hundreds of years London reigned supreme as Europe's financial capital. Its dominant position in dealing in anything from foreign exchange to stocks and shares has never been in doubt (BBC 1999). However, after the launch of the Euro, Frankfurt was being seriously considered as a serious rival to London as Europe's leading world city in the twenty first century (The Economist, 1998a; Schmitz 1999).

BBC (1999) states that the European Central Bank is not located in London but instead it has its headquarters in Germany's financial centre Frankfurt, which is now a serious pretender to London's crown. Kathy Pain (2000; 2001) concludes that London will always be Europe's premier financial centre because of its scale and relationships with New York and Tokyo but that Frankfurt and London are not competitors but codependent on each other in a Europe of international cities. Falcounbride (2003) states that the launch of the euro and the location of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt at first was seen as a threat to London it actually was not and that London's dominance and Frankfurt's growth serves as a complementary centre through quantitative analysis.

Rational for using semi or unstructured interviews as the dominant research method

There are different forms of interview methods; some of them are structured, unstructured and semi-structured. The semi structured interview generates experienced deeper understanding of the data and intense satisfaction ...