Mr. Steve Aiken:

We had a breakfast meeting one and a half months ago at which the Lord Mayor of London came over to talk to us. He spoke specifically about this sense of why the City of London wants the UK to remain within the EU. It is because London is a global gateway. The reason London is so successful is that it is linked to Europe as well as being linked to North America, China or anywhere else. If one considers the huge amount of money that is pouring into London at present, particularly from emerging markets such as Russia, India and all parts of Africa, the reason it is coming in is not just that London is a secure financial centre but also that there is a great opportunity for linking into another global market, and that global market is the EU. That is very much the message we are hearing behind the scenes from the senior banking community and also the insurance community. Yes, they are unhappy that they are being criticised about bankers' bonuses and potential taxation, but they are getting that as much from the British press as they are getting it from a European perspective.

One of the things that it is moving on with Basel II or Basel III - I apologise if I have the wrong number of Basels - is the importance the banking community sees in regard to improvements in regulation and how regulation works. We are aware of the conversations we see between Dublin and London and we see a lot of synergy between the two. Many of our members are looking to see how we can swap functions and make functions work, and how that can continue to grow. We believe that is very significant. We see that the City of London in particular will be a continual driver to push Britain towards remaining within the EU. As the Minister, Mr. Vince Cable, MP, said at our conference, he considered it to be very unlikely that Britain would exit from the EU. That was one thing, but the Lord Mayor of London, Mr. Boris Johnson, said exactly the same thing at Davos. There are two key points.