One episode above all transformed the City from a sleepy if affluent club into a global financial centre. The Big Bang of the 1980s? No, the emergence of the Eurodollar market 10 years earlier. The impending hard Brexit could create similar opportunities so long as UK negotiators do not embark on a fruitless quest for regulatory equivalence.

The Eurodollar story is an instructive one. The growth of global trade after the Second World War flooded Europe with dollars. But the ”anti-usury” policies of the US authorities in the 1970s, placing caps on bank deposit rates, made it unattractive to repatriate them to US banks, and dollar instruments began to be originated and traded outside the US. The opportunity was seized by banks in London, the Eurodollar market took off in earnest, and London began a steady ascent to its current globally pre-eminent position.