After the cull

摘要

Last year's banking crisis may be fad-ing in memory, but one indelible image remains: the dazed staff of bankrupt Lehman Brothers leaving London's Canary Wharf with their possessions in boxes. They were only the most obvious casualties of a cull of City workers that threatened to be long and broad. The outlook now is unexpectedly better. In 2007 about 354,000 people worked in London in the specialised "wholesale" financial activities like investment banking that cluster there. Their numbers fell by 30,000 last year, and are set to drop by a further 18,000 in 2009, according to cebr, an economics consultancy.