Is there a Diamond in the City? Leveraging the competitive advantage of the London financial centre

This paper applies the Diamond to a major services cluster and finds that it is an effective framework to tease out the characteristics that result in many tangible and intangible benefits of the location. The revelatory case will reveal how financial clustering influences the development of the City of London as a pre-eminent financial centre, how the Diamond conditions are defined in a service cluster, and whether there could be a generalisation of the concept. The paper concludes with the strategic and managerial implications to suggest the three golden rules of a location that will help firms optimise on these benefits. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]