Brexit: London can safeguard its global city status
伦敦仍将是全球性金融中心
广州金融翻译公司：萨森：英国脱欧后，较常规的功能（例如欧元清算），可能会从伦敦迁往别处，更复杂的市场则会仍然留在伦敦。
When it comes to leaving a city, companies and markets are very different creatures. Companies will shift from one global city to another in search of a more favourable tax regime or more beneficial employment law. For markets — particularly complex ones with strategic functions — it is much harder to move wholesale. The City of London is such a market.
谈到离开一个城市，企业和市场是截然不同的。企业从一个全球性城市迁往另一个全球性城市，是为了寻求更有利的税收或雇佣法规。对于市场——特别是具备战略性功能的复杂市场——而言，整体迁移就困难多了。伦敦金融城(City of London)就是这样一个市场。广州金融翻译公司。
Given London’s uncertain status following the Brexit vote, the predictions about the effect on Hong Kong’s financial market when China was about to take over sovereignty from the British in 1997 are useful. Beijing aimed to make Shanghai China’s main financial centre. The idea was that important Hong Kong markets would migrate to the mainland. That did not happen. Hong Kong is still China’s most international and strongest market. Shanghai, meanwhile, did expand as a financial centre but one geared more towards domestic investors.
鉴于英国脱欧公投后伦敦地位的不确定性，我们不妨参考1997年中国从英国手中收回香港主权之前，有关香港回归对香港金融市场影响的预测。中国政府原本计划将上海打造为中国主要金融中心，具体思路是让香港的重要市场迁移到内地。可是后来并没有出现这种局面。香港仍是中国国际化程度最高、实力最强的市场。与此同时，上海确实发展成为一个金融中心，但更多是服务于国内投资者。
One possible outcome for London of leaving the EU is that more routine functions, such as euro clearing, move elsewhere while the more complex markets remain. This possibility is supported by the fact that vital to the more complex London markets are strategic intermediate functions that depend on a mix of very specific types of companies and skills. This is a deeply networked function — that is, companies need each other because each individual company has only partial knowledge or highly specialist capabilities. No single business can give the leading financial centres everything it needs, as the corporate behemoths than once ruled these economies did in the 1960s and 1970s.
伦敦脱离欧盟后，一个可能的结果是较常规的功能（例如欧元清算）将迁往别处，而更复杂的市场仍留在原地。以下事实支持这种可能性：对于伦敦一些较复杂的市场而言，至关重要的是战略性中介功能，这些功能依赖于多种多样的公司和技能的组合。这是一种密切相联的功能，即企业彼此需要，因为每家公司只拥有部分知识或非常专业的能力。没有一家公司能够提供主要金融中心所需的一切，这不同于上世纪六、七十年代企业巨擘在这些经济中占主导地位的情形。广州金融翻译公司。
It is wrong to think, as many do, that our global cities are about headquarters. One feature of the globalisation that took off in the 1980s is the rise of strategic intermediate sectors, with a vital role for finance and innovative legal, accounting and digital techniques. If a business operates in 20, 30 or more countries it can no longer hire full-time staff for all its high-level know­ledge needs. If you want to do deals in Mongolia and you need 30 hours of Mongolian legal, accounting and financial advice, you buy a service, you do not hire staff. What you need is access to important markets that enable this. Our globalised economy has raised the importance of intermediation to un­precedented levels, and financial centres are the Silicon Valleys of this domain.
很多人认为，全球性城市的关键在于其总部功能，这种观点是错误的。上世纪80年代开始的全球化的一个特点是战略性媒介行业的兴起，金融以及创新性法律、会计和数字化技术发挥着至关重要的作用。如果一家公司在二三十个或者更多国家开展业务，那么它无法再聘用全职员工来满足其所有高级知识需要。如果你要在蒙古谈交易，你需要得到30个小时的有关蒙古法律、会计和金融方面的建议，那么你会购买服务，而不是聘用员工。你所需要的是你要能进入可提供这些服务的重要市场。我们的全球化经济把媒介的重要性提高到了空前水平，金融中心成为了这个领域的硅谷。
The rise of intermediation as an essential part of our increasingly globalised economy also explains the rapid increase in the number of global cities from the 1990s onwards. Today, we can identify 100 or more such centres, albeit with very diverse powers to shape broad global trends and very diverse capacities to develop and invent new instruments. One, mostly overlooked, fact is that even minor global cities have invented new instruments and built new markets, often based on a single commodity — as with Buenos Aires and sunflowers, for instance.
媒介发展成为我们日益全球化的经济中的重要组成部分，也解释了自上世纪90年代以来全球性城市的迅速增多。如今，我们可以列出100个甚至更多的全球性城市，不过它们在塑造全球性趋势方面的影响力千差万别，开发创造新工具的能力也是各不相同。一个被大多数人忽视的事实是，即便是规模较小的全球性城市也发明了新的工具、建立起了新的市场（通常基于某种单一大宗商品），比如布宜诺斯艾利斯的向日葵市场。广州金融翻译公司。
The global city function is made over time, and the process of making it is complex and multi-faceted. And, even though it is highly digitised, it is situated in concrete places.
全球性城市的功能是随着时间推移逐渐发展起来的，这个发展过程是复杂且多方面的。而且，尽管实现了高度数字化，但它们仍然坐落于实实在在的地面之上。
This also explains the proliferation of global financial centres. We could have moved towards one global superfinancial centre, as many in the late 1980s thought we would. I did not. At the time, I saw three rising global financial centres — New York, London and Tokyo — that were, crucially, quite different from one another. Eventually we saw a proliferation of global financial centres, each with its own specific specialised strengths. In Europe alone, London, Frankfurt and Paris are the leading centres, but they are very different in terms of specialist capacities.
这还解释了全球性金融中心的增多。就像上世纪80年代末很多人设想的那样，我们本来可能已迁往一个全球性的超级金融中心。我没这么想。当时，我看到3个新崛起的全球金融中心——纽约、伦敦和东京——重要的是他们各不相同。最后，我们看到全球金融中心不断增多，每个都有着自己独特的专业优势。仅就欧洲来说，伦敦、法兰克福和巴黎都是领先金融中心，但从专业能力来看，它们迥然不同。
It makes one think that it is to Frankfurt’s advantage to keep London’s most complex financial functions in London
这会让人们认为，将伦敦最复杂的金融功能继续留在伦敦对法兰克福是有利的。
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The writer is Robert S Lynd professor of sociology at Columbia University and author of ‘The Global City’
本文作者是美国哥伦比亚大学(Columbia University)社会学罗伯特•S•林德(Robert S Lynd)教授，著有《全球性城市》(The Global City)一书
