If the London Stock Exchange, an institution intimately bound up with the history of the City, decides to move to Canary Wharf, it would strike a symbolic blow far outweighing its practical impact. The Stock Exchange has been on or near its present site in Old Broad Street for 200 years. Its present home, an uninspiring 26-storey concrete tower dating from 1972, would be no loss if the site were to be redeveloped. But the exchange's bicentenary appears an unfortunate time to consider leaving.
Investment banks, lawyers and international corporations have all moved out to the gleaming new high-rise office blocks of Canary Wharf in recent years.
But the markets, including Liffe, for financial futures, the Metals Exchange and the Baltic shipping exchange that provide the trading impetus for much City business, have resolutely stayed put.
The Financial Services Authority, the City regulator, opted to base itself in Canary Wharf. But that decision lacked the historical resonance of a move out of the City by the Stock Exchange.
The exchange yesterday played down the likelihood that it would desert the City, pointing out that it was examining a range of options, including a site on the Paternoster Square development next to St Paul's Cathedral.
But the mere mention of Canary Wharf in the same breath as the Stock Exchange is enough to send shivers down the spines of the policy-makers at the Corporation of London. They recall the promise by Paul Reichmann, the Canadian developer of Canary Wharf, in the mid-1980s to move the City down the river to his new development in Docklands. The prospect of a high-quality office development designed to house the cabling and cooling equipment required by modern dealing systems prompted the City to relax its planning guidelines. It was forced to allow larger buildings on bigger "footprints" than would previously have been permitted. In its early days the prospect of a move to the soulless canyons of Canary Wharf would have prompted highly paid dealmakers to call in the headhunters. But the developers have made great efforts to encourage shops and restaurants to open up. Transport links have been improved with the opening of the extension to the Jubilee Line. In recent months Clifford Chance has become the first of the large City law firms to decamp while among the bankers, Lehman Brothers, HSBC and Citigate are also moving in to the two new towers that have been built.
The City may regret these moves but they are the inevitable result of changing conditions in the world's financial markets. With electronic deal-making, location is almost irrelevant. Small City broking and jobbing houses have made way for international financial groupings. Spurred on by the Big Bang of October 27th, 1986, the event that allowed corporate ownership of exchange member firms and swept away minimum commissions, the City has become a less clubby, parochial place.
But it is not alone in facing the pressures of change. In New York many large firms have fled Wall Street for mid-town Manhattan while some have gone to New Jersey or Connecticut.
"At least Canary Wharf is in London," said a Corporation spokesman. "They are not proposing a move to Berkshire - or Frankfurt.")
