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14/01/21
From Features
Evolution Through Innovation
Featured Article
IFCs: Pioneers In Transmission Of Legal Innovation
Andrew Morriss
Bush School of Government & Public Service and School of Law, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA
Charlotte Ku
Texas A&M University School of Law, Fort Worth, Texas, USA
The role of international financial centres (IFCs) in fostering legal innovation is one of their most significant, but least recognised contributions to the world economy.
IFCs have historically borrowed and adapted legal concepts and language from each other, as well as from onshore jurisdictions, and have deepened the legal and regulatory structure of the global finance sector by doing so. IFCs have shaped existing statutes for new purposes and drawn on foreign precedents to expand their own case law to support the rapid development of specialised legal rules.
This agility has enabled IFCs to meet otherwise unmet legal needs and to build expertise by handling large volumes of such transactions. This ability to innovate produces economic growth by redistributing risks, channelling capital to growth opportunities, sustaining business enterprise, and creating new products and services.
15 Years On
Trends From The Global Financial Centres Index Show Specialisation Remains Key To IFC Development
Mike Wardle
Chief Executive Officer, Z/Yen Group Limited
The Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI) developed from a piece of research on the competitiveness of financial centres that Z/Yen Group undertook for the City of London in 2005.
Previous research compared a small number of centres, typically just London, Frankfurt, Paris, and New York. Financial centre strength was already widely distributed at that point, and Z/Yen developed the GFCI to offer a dynamic measure of the strength of financial centres across the world. The first edition of the GFCI was published in 2007. In September 2020, Z/Yen published the 28th edition of the index, which is updated twice a year.
The GFCI is a factor assessment index that combines two distinct sets of data to create a rating for financial centres:
- Instrumental Factors: quantitative measures focused on cities and countries provided by a wide range of organisations, including the United Nations, OECD, and World Bank. A total of 138 instrumental factors were used in GFCI 28.
