A dozen or so of the City’s top fund managers recently met Ed Balls, the Shadow Chancellor, in the Shadow Cabinet room at the House of Commons to debate Labour’s plans for the Square Mile should the party win the next election.

Hosting the private event was Lord Myners, a former Treasury minister in Gordon Brown's government and, perhaps more pertinently, himself an ex-fund manager with a long City pedigree, having chaired Marks & Spencer, Land Securities and the Guardian Media Group. Recently appointed chairman of governors at the London School of Economics, Myners says the fund managers - British and foreign and of all asset classes - asked Balls some pointed questions and that the dialogue was "open and constructive" and successful.