LONDON NAMED THE WORLD'S TOP FINANCIAL CITY

CNN ANCHOR: Now if you want to do business it seems you can look 1 if you like, than right here in London. The capital of the UK is being named the most important city in the world economy for the first time, that's according to research carried out by Master Card. London out-ranks New York and Tokyo. So what is the strength of London in terms of attracting commerce? A question I put to John Ross, director for economic and business policy for the mayor of London.

JOHN ROSS: I think that London has attached itself to the best of any major city in the world to understand all the implications of globalization. It's consciously opened itself to the world economy and particularly to the newly emerging economies in China or in India, it adopted a regular tree regime which fits in with that, it's made itself open culturally etcetera, it's thought through what globalization means.

CNN ANCHOR: But it's really a services center, isn't it? I mean above all the city of London, which we can see behind you is one of the most enormous financial services capital, that's really what lifts London, 2 doing business, making widgets is rather harder, isn't it?

JOHN ROSS: London is never going to have a great manufacturing capacity again. We've lost nine hundred thousand jobs in manufacturing, but this is not a problem because we've gained nine hundred thousand jobs in the service sector. It's not important what you produce, it's that it should be internationally competitive and that's what London has really been able to do by reaching out into these new markets. Its not, I agree of course finance and business serves are its key, but we are also tremendously strong in creative industries, entertainment, leisure, 3 sort of visit tourism, although these are all built around the great financial city of London obviously.

CNN ANCHOR: What's striking though is clearly the air links to London, to the fringes of London, they're brilliant. What happens in between is really quite tough. Public transport really isn't making it. I know there's been huge investment, but is that something that can still be turned around?

JOHN ROSS: Yes that's why we're so concerned about cross rail which is the big new tube line which will go from Heathrow through to the city of London and out Canary Wharf, and the mayor said many times this is the single most important infrastructure investment for London. Although it must be said actually the journey to JFK airport is not absolutely brilliant in New York either, so I think we could probably both raise our act a bit, compared to New York. Certainly it doesn't compare to the situation which is in Singapore or something, the infrastructure is the area in which London certainly has to make progress.

CNN ANCHOR: The other issue though is plan, isn't it? 4 find somewhere,may be quick to register a business, relatively quick to register a business in the UK, but actually to find somewhere where you can put it down and get change of use more or less to that is a long, democratic process.

JOHN ROSS: Well no, there are problems but on the other hand as you can see London has undergone a tremendous amount of constructions. But that's why the government is putting an act through parliament 5 in order to give the Mayor greater strength over the question of planning to get this process through quicker. We are absolutely not complacent about being ranked number one I mean, not merely as the competition with New York, extremely intense, but there are always new Asian economies coming down the line from Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore. We are not taking, we've got to our present position by working very hard and we intend to keep it that way.

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