Luxembourg and London compete but also cooperate, the Lord Mayor of London says about the relationship between the two financial centres, and while regulation might diverge to some extent, better relations with the EU and joint leadership on climate finance should mean honest brokerage.
The Lord Mayor, Michael Mainelli, gave a keynote address at a British Chamber of Commerce event dedicated to both financial centres on Monday, joining via video stream.
Ahead of the speech, he spoke with the Luxembourg Times about the UK and Luxembourg financial centre, opportunities for collaboration, the new EU-UK summit and how London is faring five years after Brexit.
How do you view the current relationship between London and Luxembourg, particularly in finance and trade?
Relations are very good. There is a lot of cross-play between London and Luxembourg. The thing that we offer for Luxembourg is access to large global pools of capital. Lots of capital lands in London and it’s our job to do the best for our clients, and the best for our clients is not to keep it here. It’s not British money, it’s international money.
For us, Luxembourg is an excellent point of contact into the EU. The benefits are the friendly regulatory system, very high skill set, particularly in fund management and it is easy to get to. The other comparable centre for us would probably be Dublin. Those two centres see a tremendous amount of our funds’ action.
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