For London's New Super-Rich, No Whim Need Go Unfulfilled

The Washington Post reports:

They call themselves "the haves and the have yachts": rich London bankers and traders who drop tens of thousands of dollars for an evening of cocktails and hire "personal concierges" to get their girlfriends dresses like those worn by movie stars.

Long a hub for the world's ultra-rich, London has just welcomed an unprecedented number of newcomers into those ranks. Analysts here estimate that London's financial stars were paid a total of $17 billion in annual bonuses in recent weeks -- including more than 4,200 people who received bonuses of at least $2 million each, on top of salaries already sagging under the weight of zeros.

"There is a great deal of money sloshing about," said Tony Travers of the London School of Economics, noting that 15 years of uninterrupted growth in one of the world's most open economies has set London's financial sector swaggering.

This has drawn attention from Wall Street, which regards itself as the center of the financial universe and is not unfamiliar with staggering and conspicuous wealth. A January report commissioned by New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (R) and Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) concluded that increasingly tight regulation of U.S. financial markets, as well as strict immigration laws, were hurting New York, while rival London, closer to rising giants in Asia and Russia, was becoming more attractive to business and talent.

London will probably become the world's financial center because of the ability to hit many time zones in daylight not because the British Empire is going to rise again.