Within a decade the UK’s own investment banks had been swallowed by their American and European competitors.20 American, Asian and European capital flooded in. This involved not only regulatory change and huge financial flows but the physical reconfiguration of the medieval heart of the City of London. To house the gigantic new offices and electronic trading desks needed by global banks, Canadian real estate moguls undertook the construction of a massive new office complex in the abandoned postindustrial docklands of Canary Wharf.
