The City of London and the Development of English Financial Services Law

This analysis argues that the development of UK financial services law is effectively the history of English financial services law and that English financial services regulation has largely been concerned with the City of London. The regulation of the UK financial services sector is reasonably well-known with respect to the last two decades. However, there is a general lack of awareness regarding regulatory developments in previous centuries. This critique discusses key factors in the development of UK financial services regulation from the Middle Ages. It is effectively a perspective on the financial and associated markets of the City of London which have been the dominant players in the history of the UK financial sector. The analysis considers how the collective interests of the City of London's financial markets have protected their regulatory autonomy and consistently reproduced their regulatory environment over a period of several hundred years