London’s financial industry looks to boost global competitiveness 20 Apr 2021 The City of London financial district can be seen as people walk along the south side of the River Thames on Tuesday. Britain launched on Tuesday an independent review of banking capital and proprietary trading rules that is set to pit banks against their regulator as London’s powerful financial industry looks to boost its global competitiveness after Brexit. Since the start of 2019, Britain requires HSBC, Barclays and other banks to “ring-fence” the retail arms of their operations with capital to shield them from any losses in their riskier, investment banking arms, after taxpayers had to bail out lenders during the financial crisis.