AT SOME STAGE in an emerging market’s development, a certain grandiosity takes hold of the governing class. The new airport has been built, the stock market is at all-time highs, the coffers are full and the rivals are creaking. The next must-have accessory is an international financial centre. Like a lottery winner buying the Bentley, countries want an IFC to show they’ve made it.
It is easy to sneer. The field of dreams approach (if we build it they will come), has come to naught in many countries. The Labuan IFC – built on a tropical island off the coast of Malaysia – is notable only for the eerie silence of nothing happening. The various IFCs set up in the Middle East have similarly been a triumph of money spent rather than finance raised.
Now Istanbul is staking its claim to develop the latest IFC. In...
