Frankfurt Financial Centre Challenged by 1992

Abstract

Within the last few years competition among the leading financial centres in the world has intensified markedly. This reflects the ongoing process of globalization, which itself is the result of various developments. The tendency towards globalization goes back to the late 1960s when a rapidly growing world trade induced a parallel expansion of international capital flows. In the 1970s the oil price explosion and the recycling of petro-dollars boosted those flows to new heights. In the 1980s globalization was more and more the result of genuinely-based developments in the financial markets rather than on events in the real economy. Deregulation, securitization and an immense progress in communication technologies became the main driving forces.