The Clustering of Financial Services in London*

sectors had too few responses to analyze without re-working of the data which would have
entailed aggregation and the associated cost of loss of detail about the degree of importance
attached to each factor.

Firm size is based on the number of employees at the establishment to which the
questionnaire was sent. Some firms with very few employees were subsidiaries of
substantial firms, the leading example being the London offices of central banks from
around the globe. However, perusal of the sample reveals that the majority of firms
categorized as small were genuinely small firms and not the small plants of large firms.

The interview survey was designed to provide qualitative evidence complementing
quantitative data gathered by the postal questionnaire. Whereas the postal survey provides
hard, measurable evidence on discrete questions from a large sample of firms of different
sizes, the in-depth face-to-face meetings elicit “softer” evidence on the processes
underlying the data drawing on the experience of senior practitioners in leading London
financial services organizations. In order to explore complex functional relationships
associated with spatial clustering freely, a semi-structured interview methodology was
adopted. The interview schedule (Appendix 3) was used to guide discussion towards the
key research themes and a series of prompts and probes were introduced by the interviewer
to refine lines of questioning as new insights and understandings emerged. This
methodology provided the flexibility to utilize knowledge gained progressively during each
interview to inform the dialogue building a rich data base overall on particular
circumstances and variables. Importantly, the approach allowed the identification and
exploration of issues prioritized by respondents themselves as relevant to the research
questions and the development of a sound understanding of causes and effects. The
scheduled interview length was 45 minutes but in many cases discussion extended to 60 or
90 minutes. The aim was to interview a selection of senior executives in leading
organizations within key sub-sectors. Such organizations, in a series of sub-sectors:
banking, auxiliary finance, insurance, legal, accounting/consulting, were identified using
2001/2002 sources, for example The Banker, London Investment Banking Association
(LIBA), International Financial Services, London (IFSL) and invited to participate. While

question 1 in Appendix 2). There were very few overlaps between the largest categories with, for example,
very few banks indicating they also had insurance operations and vice versa.

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