CurrencyTrading.net has an interesting piece titled, 12 Surprising Implications of London’s Replacing New York as the World’s Financial Center by Jessica Hupp.

Here’s just one of the “implications” :

“Financial regulation: After scandals like Enron, the financial industry is more heavily regulated. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act required lots of tightening of financial controls. As a result, it’s less attractive to do business in a country where every transaction is scrutinized.”

Read the whole article here.

In a survey of financial executives by the Global Financial Centres Index, London scored well ahead of its rivals, and even extended its lead.

London did better than New York on an array of topics, including personnel, business environment, market access, facilities and competitiveness.

The City scored 806 out of 1000, compared with nearest rival New York’s 787. Trailing behind came Hong Kong, Singapore, Zurich and Frankfurt.

Again London is reaffirmed as the world’s financial capital.

The London Stock Exchange, which has seen almost a half of its shares snapped up by two rival Arab Royal families, has announced that the summer’s volatility in share trading during the credit crunch in financial markets has boosted growth in the booming exchange’s business.

Chief executive Clara Furse said the merger with Borsa Italiana should be completed by October 1st. “The exchange is very close to completing the merger with Borsa Italiana, having secured overwhelming support from both sets of shareholders. We are focused on implementing our merger plans which will lead to accelerated growth for the enlarged group.

“The Exchange continues to make excellent progress and has delivered a very strong trading performance for the year to date. In particular, the Sets electronic order book achieved enormous volume growth over the summer, as increased market volatility during the period added to strong growth already being facilitated by the new TradElect platform, in conjunction with customer and other exchange initiatives.”

In the past five months alone, the number of deals done on the Sets electronic trading system has grown by 75 percent over the same period a year ago, to around 551,000 a day. This smashes the 480,000 target set for the full year ending next March.

The London Stock Exchange is looking for a new name for the business that will own the merged LSE and Borsa Italiana.

Although the London exchange will retain its own name, the new entity will reflect the two components of the company, the LSE announced.

The London Stock Exchange has undergone yet more changes in its make-up as a result of the frantic tussle between rival Gulf States, Qatar and Dubai.

Dubai currently holds 29 percent of LSE shares after buying up most of the Nasdaq stake. Qatar has 21 percent but seeks more.

The LSE board sees the Qataris as friendly invaders — with a seat at the top table — and plans to help Dohar in Qatar become a world-class financial centre.

Meanwhile, the partnership between Nasdaq and Dubai (which owns 20 percent of the American exchange, while Nasdaq has 30 percent of the Dubai International Financial Center) is close to gaining control of Swedish-based exchange group, OMX, also a target for the Qatar Investment Authority.