Worldwide, financial architecture is changing. The growth of new financial centres is universal (for example, Mumbai, Shanghai, Bahrain, Dubai) and many established centres are rapidly expanding the scope of their business, such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo.
The reasons for this are many but one dominates: the recycling of global imbalances is leading to a rapid growth in regional financial centres, be it the recycling of petrodollar surpluses through Bahrain and Dubai or the recycling of trade surpluses through Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Mumbai or Tokyo.