UK Financial And Professional Services

In 2024, UK financial and professional services produced £307bn in economic output, 12% of the entire economic output of the UK. Around three quarters of a million people work in financial services of one kind or another in London, a lot of them in the buildings you can see here.

I took this photo from just across the Thames near the Globe Theatre and the Tate Modern.

A few days ago I was at the Queen’s House, at Greenwich – further south and up on a hill.

The Queen’s House, as I mentioned in a post about is a 17th-century villa, designed by Inigo Jones.

It’s called the Queen’s House because it was commissioned by Queen Anne of Denmark but she died before it was completed. Charles I then gave the house to his wife Henrietta Maria as a royal house to enjoy herself.

It is free to enter and is basically an art gallery.

Here is the view back across the Thames. The buildings of modern London remind me of the Manhattan skyline.

And a lot of building continued during Covid. I wondered at the time whether construction workers had higher rates of infection.

I don’t know who the people in the photo are, I was interested in the view across the river.