The fact that BNP Paribas has its London base neither in the Square Mile nor in Canary Wharf but in NW1 – next door to Marylebone station – is, to a degree, a quirk of London real-estate history. But it is no fluke that BNP’s fixed-income operation, considered among the more innovative in the expanding and increasingly complex field of structured finance and derivatives, is the only part of the corporate and investment bank to be headquartered in London.

The presence of innovative “clusters” – highly skilled people, backed by state-of-the-art technology and reliable telecommunications systems – is one of the main attractions of London for the financial services community and has provided a foundation for the growth of the most creative and risk-hungry constituents of the New City, such as private equity houses and hedge funds.