In 2007, New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg published a report by McKinsey on the Big Apple’s status as the world’s leading financial centre. It issued a stark warning: Unless the US changed its heavy-handed approach to financial regulation, New York would continue to lose business to the lighter-touch regime in London.

Looking back a decade later it is as if the report was describing a different planet. Following the financial crisis, US financial regulation was tightened not loosened. And although Europe also responded, the US moved further and faster. The playing field was tilted even more against the US.