Glasgow: a world class financial and professional services location

In one of our most eagerly anticipated seminars to date, over 50 individuals from politics, finance and academia gathered yesterday to discuss the future of financial and related professional services in Glasgow’s International Financial Services District, the wider city and throughout Scotland.

The Herald Scotland highlighted the event in its Sunday edition quoting our research showing that 12.1% of Scottish GDP is earned by financial and professional services, the highest proportion outside London (25.2%). Our seminar followed hot on the heels of an announcement at the end of 2011 that US investment bank Morgan Stanley would hire 250 additional staff on top of the 1,100 already located at the firm’s Glasgow operations hub. Other firms with a significant presence in the local area include JP Morgan, Lloyds Banking Group and insurer AON.

The smart client suite of Barclays Wealth on Bothwell Street played host to the day’s event which included a panel featuring:

• Fergus Ewing MSP, Minister for Energy, Enterprise and Tourism;
• Darrell Sansom, Managing Director AXA; 
• Jack Perry, Barclays Wealth; 
• Professor Farhad Noorbakhsh, Head of University of Glasgow’s Business School; 
• Chris Cummings, CEO of TheCityUK.

All the panellists emphasised the strong and competitive pool of talent in Glasgow. The city boasts four universities, twelve colleges and other specialist higher education centres. It was noted that demand for financial services related courses in the region is increasing dramatically – in particular from overseas.

Fergus Ewing MSP addresses TheCityUK Glasgow seminar

Jack Perry highlighted that financial services are incredibly important for the whole of the UK, not just in the City of London: with around one in 13 of Glasgow's total workforce employed in the financial sector it is easy to see why.  

Darrell Sansom was keen to explain why the location of Glasgow works for AXA. With over 400 employees based in the city, he pointed to the need to be close to customers in an area offering a skilled and available workforce, with a great attitude. Their philosophy is to ‘hire for attitude and train for skill’. In addition, there is support for Glasgow as an enterprise zone, helping to create a high quality and effective workforce .  

Professor Farhad Noorbakhsh drew attention to the importance of recovering and maintaining basic trust in the industry through appropriate risk management programmes, governance and accountability.

Fergus Ewing MSP underlined how important financial services are to the Scottish economy with 85,000 people in Scotland directly employed in the sector. He believes there is a relatively high degree of trust in the sector generally in Scotland, which may be a key reason why so many companies have chosen to locate in Scotland: Barclays has recently invested significantly in its premises; Morgan Stanley continues to further invest in Glasgow; J.P. Morgan picked Glasgow from 20 sites around the world; and Lloyds Banking Group employs over 1,000 people at its Glasgow call centre. All of these firms are committed to business growth in Scotland.

Read more:

• Financial and professional services in Glasgow
• Morgan Stanley case study