Announcement The 2025 Global Financial Centre Competitiveness Index

Hi everyone. Thank you. My name is Rob Solomon. I'm the dean of the Stern School of Business here at NYU Abu Dhabi where I also serve as a professor as well. And we're glad, proud, honored to host the International Global Financial Competitiveness Center, the IGFC.

And today what we'll be doing is introducing the FCCI, which is our index that's measures the competitiveness of financial centers. Now, why have we decided to engage in this activity? And the reality is is that this is consistent with our mission. We at Stern are a school that is founded on two things. Research rigor and research relevance.

Right? [snorts] We not only want to do amazing rigorous scientific research, but we also want to make sure that that research is relevant for practitioners who can use it and apply it in the world. And so this is very consistent with who we are as an institution. Now when we think about financial centers, financial centers at their essence are important engines of economic growth. They are a catalyst for economic activity.

And unfortunately, we know less than we should about the growth of financial centers. What exists out there right now are indexes that simply measure and rank financial centers. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. In this measure, what we are going to do is not only create a ranking, but we are also producing a methodology that goes beyond simple rankings. It will allow decision makers and policy makers to engage with the tool to see what levers they have at their disposal.

We know that financial centers are about people. They're about policy. They're about investment. They're about growth. And now for the first time, we have a way to measure all of those elements.

Not just in a static fashion, how financial centers are today, but what levers can we pull to change them and to improve our standing as a financial center and to improve our economic growth. And with that, I would like to hand it over to Bruno Lanin, who has joined us as a senior adviser and who spearheads this project and he is working closely with professor Anisa Shiti from the NYU Stern School of Business here in Abu Dhabi to work on this financial center competitiveness index. With that, I'll turn it over to Bruno to tell you more.

Thank you, Rob. Thank you. Hello everybody. So, um,

we apologize too much. We're the Brits. The, um, as Rob just said, um, this is the first time ever this index is shown to the world. So this is not just the global launch, it's the inaugural global launch of the financial centers competitiveness index. Why create a new financial centers competitiveness index and what is new about it?

Well, the structure of the model behind that index is the first novelty introduced. Basically, as you can see on this simplified diagram, the index relies on two parts. It works on two legs. The left part is what we call the footprint. The footprint reflects the current situation and activity of financial centers around the world as they are today.

The right side of the model which we call the dynamics reflects the ways in which these financial centers are changing and some of them are changing very fast. They are changing so fast that a real challenge exists to the current hierarchy of financial centers around the world and this is what we want to track. The uh academic rigor that uh Rob already underlined is a critical element of this index. It is based on very precise definitions of what is a financial center, what a city is because the data we use are citybased as opposed to nation statebased. And uh last but not least, this model is being audited.

It is being stress checked. So it corresponds to all the criteria of academic rigor. But the most important question is who is this for? Why do should we create a new index and who will be expected to use it? Actually, there are at least three main categories of users.

Of course, they are the managers of financial centers. They want their own financial centers to be as competitive, as attractive, as efficient as possible for their clients. The second category is those clients, the investors, the fund managers, the asset managers who will come to a specific financial center to operate in a particular geography or worldwide. And the third category is governments. Those who create the legal and regulatory environment by which these financial centers operate.

And of course beyond this triangle of what we call the main users, anybody else interested in the dynamics of global finance in identifying the weak and strong signals about how financial networks are being engineered and re-engineered today uh is critically important to us. These are the rankings. Okay. So we know that this is what will attract media attention today, tomorrow, in the weeks to come. People will want to see where is my own uh financial center.

As uh Rob mentioned, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Uh basically we like to be the center of attraction. So when we publish the rankings, the media jump at it and say, "Oh, uh, this financial center is at the top. Our financial center is moving up." Whatever judgment they want to convey, but our reaction will always be, we're happy we got your attention, but now let's look at the nitty-gritty.

Let's look at the action part of these indices. So clearly it's important to know that you have New York, London, Singapore at the very top and that reflects the footprint largely. But what happens you know around between 10 and 20 is probably the most interesting part of FCCI. This is where things are moving. see in the audience eyes already trying to spot where Abu Dhabi is.

So Abu Dhabi is number 12 clearly in that category of the most dynamic the part of the rankings where things change in the most interesting way. these indices and having been involved for about 25 years in putting global together global indices, I can tell you that the most important thing to remember is that this is not the Olympics of financial centers. It is not about handing medals saying you are gold, you are silver, you're bronze. It is about action. It is about enabling financial centers to become better to create more value to be a more active part of this global engineering of finance.

And this is where we want to call the attention of users. And one way of doing that is to provide tools in the uh report uh and you have uh at your seat the executive version is being handed out now. The executive version of the report. It's about 40 pages. So it's a small document.

The full report is about 250 pages and it includes charts and tables like these. Each financial centers is represented graphically depending on the axis you want to give more attention to. What is even more important and I will finish on that is that the index is totally transparent and it can be configured in any which way you want. Let's imagine for instance that you're involved in real estate or you're a hedge fund manager. There are some aspects of financial centers that will matter more for you.

And when you have to decide whether you want to go to Abu Dhabi or to Hong Kong or to New York, there are criteria you want to give more weight to than others. We have an online tool and this QR code will allow you to get to that online tool whereby you can change anything you want in the index. You can eliminate a variable. you can increase the weight of another one and that gives you the ability to actually make it look the way you want and that we believe is something that has never been done in the past. It is the first global index that offers that possibility to users.

So, uh we hope you enjoy it and I leave the last word to Rob. Thank you Bruno. So, as Bruno mentioned, having a dynamic model will allow people to understand what those individual drivers are of financial centers. And as a leader, a policy maker, a decision maker, you can see where to direct and devote resources in order to grow, develop, and build your financial center. Now, one thing I would mention about this, as Bruno said, the reports will have been distributed.

The executive summary either has been distributed to to you already or you will receive it shortly. There is a bigger report that is a follow on to this that you can gain access to as well. But what I will say about this is I view this as the beginning of a conversation and not the end of a conversation. This is the first in a series of indices that we will produce hopefully annually with this information and we'll be able to see in real time how financial centers change. And so what we would ask of you is to please engage with us.

Tell us what you think, share your feedback, become involved. We plan to host uh a set of of of seminars and conferences and research papers around this financial center competitiveness index and we're just at the beginning of the center the institute the research institute that we've established the institute for global financial centers. So please I hope you enjoy it. I hope it's thoughtprovoking, but more than anything, the nice thing about living in an increasingly data oriented and algorithmically driven world is that there's always better data and we're always refining and improving the algorithms. And I hope that you will join us toward that end.

Thank you very much.

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