| Headline: Financial centres - Miami spice Source: Euromoney Date: March 2000 Author: Antony Currie It might surprise people to learn that Miami is now vying with Chicago to be the largest financial and business centre in the US after New York. It's an ambitious aim for a city whose two major financial districts are so small that it takes just a few minutes to walk through either of them. But Miami is luring international banks and all types of businesses, from delivery companies such as UPS and FedEx, technology companies such as IBM, to the dot coms. All view Miami as the staging post for their Latin American operations. Antony Currie reports One of the standing jokes about Miami is that, as the northernmost point of Latin America, it's the region's closest city to the US. In fact, it's becoming more important politically, being the venue for recent negotiations between Honduras and Nicaragua. As far as legitimate business was concerned, this was hardly a bonus until the late 1980s at the very earliest. Trade finance was conducted in Miami, and private banking took off towards the end of the 1970s, but not much else. |