Private equity’s warning shot — hike taxes on executives’ payouts and we’ll walk — seems a far emptier threat when Central London is itself pretty empty. Do wholesale financial services even need to be in London anyway?

Economist Michael Porter asserted that business clusters breed economies of scale, professional networks and creativity. Examples include talent-rich hubs like Silicon Valley and Hollywood — and, yes, the City of London and Wall Street. In a cluster, you can schmooze the powerful, pitch to investors and run term sheets past lawyers, all within a few square miles. 

Six months of lockdown and its aftermath have challenged that wisdom. On the face of it, global capital has had no real problem working from home. Speak to titans of industry and finance privately and a different picture emerges. Deals have been lost. It is tougher to raise a bid when the smartest people in the room are all in different rooms.