Every month, some young bureaucrat in the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange (known, slightly menacingly, as SAFE) reaches out to a trader in London and buys or sells billions of dollars’ worth of U.S. Treasury bonds. You’ve heard the overblown fears that China owns too much U.S. debt, but you might not realize that it’s a British firm that regularly gets the commission. That’s because London is the world’s largest market for dollars. When a company in Shanghai or São Paulo decides to sell public shares internationally, they’re very likely to choose London, too.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/magazine/how-london-surpassed-wall-street.html?ref=magazine