The financial place of Zurich and the role of financial intermediaries. The case of the European metropolitan region of Zurich (170)

Theme Track: Sectoral Changes and New Markets - Financial and Public Services

Author:
Kruse, Christian

The international financial market changes rapidly. Financial places develop as centres of highly concentrated and specialised service economies. Involved participants and enterprises execute regulation functions, by which they can strongly influence market tendencies of the financial as wells as of the industrial sector. In the passed years new technologies, political deregulation, the displacement of traditional banks by new financial companies and a changed financing and investment behaviour have led to a profound change of a the face of the international financial landscape.



This change is perceptible - by the large attendance of young, strongly expanding financial companies and the penetration of everyday life in the form of pervasive financial information as well as massive media report. New financial market developments are characterised by the integration of private households through huge financial advertisement campaigns for a stock or fond oriented investment behaviour. The landscape shaping back-office locations at the outskirts of cities and impressive architectures in the financial districts of the city centres are the visual consequences of this growth.

Financial places take also an important function in metropolitan regions. They are nodal points in the internationalisation process. Recent sociological research predominantly argued with a meta-theoretical discussion about financial places as being world-economic control centres. In this discussion globalisation and world-economic developments have been made responsible for a concentration of decision functions and market power in a few global cities. But a systemic analysis of the phenomenon "financial place" however did not take place so far yet, approaches to a type-like theory of financial places are missing completely. Questions about the background of changes within the international financial landscape, the importance of regulations, actors and financial companies, which could show structures and functions of financial places, are still unanswered.

Furthermore it gets complex, if one adds to the system of financial places another point: its relation or effects on other systems as for example the production system. Are there indications for the necessity of geographical proximity between production systems and financial places. Can one expect positive spillovers perhaps resulting in a better financing of innovations?

The paper will put emphasis on the role of financial intermediaries, who link the financial with the production sector. How does this intermediaries influence the value chain of production through ratings, risk analysis, due diligence procedures, Initial Public Offerings or Mergers and Acquisitions? By giving insigth into a current research project, the paper looks at the driving forces of the financial intermediaries in the regional innovation system of the European Metropolitan Region of Zurich.

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