Actually, there are 2 financial center in London. Canary Wharf and the City.
Canary Wharf does not enjoy the same weirdo status as the City and that does not seem to prevent bank like HSBC to be headquartered there. Also quite a lot of financial institutions bleed outside of the City, like in SouthBank.
The whole financial sector in the UK has a murky reputation, and there have been regular show on TV about how "the City" is a big money laundering machine. The City in this cased was used as a synonym for the whole sector in the UK rather than the physical location.
True, but if Barclays has 500 subsidiaries, how many will hsbc have? It was probably just cheaper to have the big office in canary wharf and keep the city office with less staff.
I work close to bank station and I have never in my life seen so many banks, in the smallest spaces you get the most exotic bank branch from a bank operating in some other part of the world. And that's just on the street level - if it's not a pret it's a bank- and who knows what's in those generic skyscrapers housing 20 different companies...
Canary Wharf does not enjoy the same weirdo status as the City and that does not seem to prevent bank like HSBC to be headquartered there. Also quite a lot of financial institutions bleed outside of the City, like in SouthBank.
The whole financial sector in the UK has a murky reputation, and there have been regular show on TV about how "the City" is a big money laundering machine. The City in this cased was used as a synonym for the whole sector in the UK rather than the physical location.