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This book chapter is closed access. ; On 10 October 2007, even before the smouldering global financial crisis erupted in earnest, the curtain fell for the Dutch bank ABN AMRO. After a protracted hedge fund-initiated takeover battle, the bank was split up and sold to Banco Santander, Fortis, and the Royal Bank of Scotland at a record high of seventy-two billion Euros. Less than a year later, on 3 October 2008, the financial crisis fully hit continental Europe and the Dutch government bailed out the part of ABN AMRO that was sold to Fortis. In the aftermath of the takeover a wide consensus emerged that this was the inevitable fate of an underperforming company in a financialized global economy (Financieele Dagblad 2007): ABN AMRO had played 'the global endgame' and had lost (Smit 2008). This chapter sets out to explain how and why procyclical corporate mechanisms associated with 'global endgame' discourse, such as the radical reorganization of the bank to the purpose of shareholder value creation, that sealed the banks' fate took root at the bank. More specifically, the chapter enquires into the scope of the agency of ABN AMRO's management as it was leading a 'second tier' bank from a 'second tier' global city in decline —i.e. Amsterdam— during the late-1990s and early-2000s (Engelen 2007; Faulconbridge et al. 2007; Fernandez 2011; Larson et al. 2011).

AbstractThis article critically evaluates the network‐centrism of much of contemporary world cities research and queries its capacity to unveil key accumulation processes under financialized globalization. Our object of inquiry is the world city archipelago (WCA), a material yet non‐contiguous space of world city 'islands', which is (re)produced through the socio‐spatial practices of advanced producer services (APS) firms as they assist in constructing (financial) accumulation strategies for their clients. Scrutinizing the WCA with a singular focus on networks can veil dynamics that lead to internal stratification and hierarchy between world cities and their constitutive outside. Alternatively, these veiled dimensions are better grasped by territorial, scalar and place‐based abstractions. As an example, we unveil WCA space by studying the space of APS practices in three recent cases of Eurobond issuance. By comparing these three instances through an encompassing approach, a bounded geography of a financialized accumulation space is identified, which contains London and other world cities as a necessary space of dependence but also stretches out to various contingent spaces of engagement at the fringes of the WCA network: offshore jurisdictions and places of debt origination. We conclude by making the case for a heightened sensitivity in respect of core–periphery structures that exist between the WCA and its outside, but also within the WCA itself.

The rise of Fintech challenges established financial centres and incumbent financial institutions to rethink their strategies to remain obligatory passage points in the age of digitizing finance. To appreciate these changes, it is important to maintain theoretical interchange between developments in financial geography and economic geography, its parent discipline. In this paper, we argue that the ways in which evolutionary economic geography impacts strategic coupling in global financial networks are crucial to grasp tomorrow's geographies of Fintech. Through an in-depth examination of Brussels, we analyse the potential of Fintech opening a window of locational opportunity in financial services. Belgium has put together a strategy to seize this window by leveraging its politically neutral image and Brussels' existing niche in financial collaboration and infrastructural plumbing. The latter status is exemplified by the presence of global players SWIFT and Euroclear. We analyse how Belgian entrepreneurs and politicians assess Brussels' locational resources, and strategically couple big financial institutions with small tech startups in order to cultivate a Fintech ecosystem in the service of incumbent finance, constituting a Fin-Tech-State triangle. As such, we document and analyse how the coalescence of finance and technology offers new opportunities for secondtier financial centres, while highlighting the difficulties in reaping these in practice.

The rise of Fintech challenges established financial centres and incumbent financial institutions to rethink their strategies to remain obligatory passage points in the age of digitizing finance. To appreciate these changes, it is important to maintain theoretical interchange between developments in financial geography and economic geography, its parent discipline. In this paper, we argue that the ways in which evolutionary economic geography impacts strategic coupling in global financial networks are crucial to grasp tomorrow's geographies of Fintech. Through an in-depth examination of Brussels, we analyse the potential of Fintech opening a window of locational opportunity in financial services. Belgium has put together a strategy to seize this window by leveraging its politically neutral image and Brussels' existing niche in financial collaboration and infrastructural plumbing. The latter status is exemplified by the presence of global players SWIFT and Euroclear. We analyse how Belgian entrepreneurs and politicians assess Brussels' locational resources, and strategically couple big financial institutions with small tech startups in order to cultivate a Fintech ecosystem in the service of incumbent finance, constituting a Fin-Tech-State triangle. As such, we document and analyse how the coalescence of finance and technology offers new opportunities for secondtier financial centres, while highlighting the difficulties in reaping these in practice.

The contemporary urban transport debate is increasingly versed in terms of "sustainable" development, placing social and environmental issues on the agenda. However, despite their heterogeneity, sustainable perspectives seldom engage with the explicitly political issues that shape the relationship between transport and urban development. In this paper, we propose to re-connect urban transport with political economic considerations, and thus to mobilise and strengthen "critical" perspectives on urban transport. We develop a framework for studying transport policies inspired by Henri Lefebvre's conceptualisation of "the right to the city". The framework is illustrated with the empirical example of a "pedestrianisation" project in Brussels, a salient case of a "sustainable" transport policy. We demonstrate how ostensibly progressive intentions in terms of challenging local mobility paradigms do not necessarily translate into participative and transformative practices. Instead, they often embrace the established policy-makers, leave local power relations largely unaltered, support elite entrepreneurial agendas, and obfuscate the socio-spatially uneven landscapes of contemporary cities. We thus highlight the urgency of re-politicising urban transport theory and practice by seeking and revealing political economic choices, contradictions and conflicts that underpin transport policies interwoven with urban development dynamics. ; This is an accepted manuscript version of the published article. To find the published article, please follow the DOI.

AbstractThe rise of financial technology (FinTech) engenders novel business models through integrating financial services and information and communication technologies (ICT). Digital currencies and payments, data mining, and other FinTech applications threaten to radically overhaul the financial sector. This article argues that, while we are becoming aware of how technology giants such as Apple Inc. are making inroads into financial services, we need to become more sensitive to how financial incumbents mimick ICT firms while aiming to neutralize the FinTech challenge. Practices from Silicon Valley are spilling over into 'traditional' finance through a process we dub Appleization. We illustrate how incumbents aim to remain indispensable amidst rapid digitization. Mimicking tech strategies, financial incumbents resort to transforming legacy ICT systems into integrated platforms, cultivating entrepreneurial ecosystems where startups are 'free' to compete whilst effectively being locked into the incumbent's orbit. We illustrate this by comparing Apple's business features (locking-in developers, customers and state into a hybrid business model based on a synergy between hardware, software and data-driven platform components) with emerging practices in the financial industry. Our analogy suggests that the Appleization of finance might radically transform, yet not undercut the oligopolistic position of financial incumbents.

The Eurozone crisis that erupted in 2008 has raised sincere doubts about the durability of political and financial linkages among its member states. This paper associates the resulting political–economic stasis of the Eurozone with the coevolution of the financial and monetary system at the European scale. The argument builds on insights from financial geography, cultural political economy, and sociology of finance. It focuses on the idea that financial market rationalities, which fluctuate over time and space, are socially constructed through an interplay of acts of 'bricolage' by state and market actors. We relate these rationalities to the main European initiatives regarding financial and monetary integration since the 1992 Maastricht Treaty. By tracing the geographical patterns of cross-border lending of European banks in the period 2003–10 we observe that two radically different rationalities of 'sound investment' have dominated before and after the crisis. In the precrisis conjuncture of convergence, the Eurozone seemed to develop 'according to plan' where the financial system appeared beneficial in terms of equalizing development. However, since the crisis there has been a conjuncture of 'contagion' in which country-level specificities increasingly determine creditworthiness. Meanwhile, we observe that European policy makers try to refit the monetary system to this new market rationality to make the European scale 'perform' again.