In London, the City is relentlessly advancing, an unstoppable march. As you move through it, it seems like a place engulfed by another, sometimes framed or superimposed.

Further away still, you will find yourself in a sort of borderland. On one side you can see the stone, liberty style buildings. White, solid. There are a few hints of glass, a few structures which seem to be there just by chance. These are exceptional cases, as the core of London finance, the “square mile” around the old town hall, is somehow immune to the British obsession of destroying and rebuilding with no regrets.

On the other side you look east, to Liverpool Street, Shoreditch, where the City is expanding, devouring the old peripheries, once run down areas, now fashionable, tomorrow part of the pulsating heart of global finance. Here glass prevails. A few meters away, you might see four girls in electric blue suits inside a reception hall completely made of glass. Behind them there is a giant aquarium where tropical fish swim.  Outside, the City resembles an even bigger crystal tank.

London is the capital of finance, and this is where worldwide investments are increasingly attracted. The Global Financial Centres Index lists London as the first among all financial centres of the world. In the City’s square mile there are 15,000 companies, which alone generated some 58 billion euros of revenue in 2014. This figure does not include income created by the rest of the city which, in total, is greater than New York and Hong Kong, dwarfing Milan or Frankfurt. It is often mentioned at The Business Club Italia, the think-tank of the Italian financial community in London, that a large share of investment decisions on Italian capital, for Italian companies, are taken by Italians – not in Milan, but in London. Not by chance, many among London’s financial top managers are Italian or of Italian origin: the Managing Director of J.P. Morgan, Alessandro Barnaba; the CEO of Vodafone, Vittorio Colao; the President and CEO of General Electric Oil & Gas, Lorenzo Simonelli.

The same is true in the case of Massimo Della Ragione, partner, co-head of the Investment Banking division and country coordinator for Italy of Goldman Sachs. «This is the natural place to do finance», says Massimo in his office on Fleet Street, in the old City. London has the right infrastructures, language and logistics support to be the centre of global finance. Also, the correct time zone. While we talk, behind the investment banking door, people are working with Hong Kong, where it is afternoon. After lunch they will start with New York, where it will be morning.

Massimo tells us how he has witnessed his sector changing over the twenty-five years he has spent in London, and so the role of Italians. At the beginning of the 1990s he probably met two or three Italians working in investment banking. Now there are hundreds. Investment banking is in fact a global business, which goes where the opportunities are most appealing. During the wave of privatisations in the 1990s, the markets became interested in Italy, bringing Italians onto the global scene, where became known players in the sector. They were good, and stabilised their position, covering some of the most important roles in companies such as UBS, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan. And whose core activities are now in London.

The City is also a land of opportunities, for whoever is determined enough to reach what he or she is aiming for. This is the story of Aqua Sanfelice di Monteforte, a Lloyd’s broker, the world’s specialist insurance market. She tells us her story at the centre of the Lloyd’s building, a glass monolith whose base is a vast open space full of “desks” in the Underwriting Room or, simply, The Room.

She arrived in London in 1999 without a degree and immediately began to work in the insurance industry. It was full of men, marked by a strong machismo, a sector where deals between brokers were made half in the Lloyd’s building, half amongst friends at the pub after a couple of pints. Aqua worked 13, 14 hours a day, all the week ends. After six months she had already doubled her salary. Now, she is the managing director of her department, one of the largest for its sector in the City.

Aqua escorts us around Lloyd’s, going to the Rostrum, a giant wooden canopy at the centre of The Room. There, the Lutine Bell, which tolls to inform the brokers of events: once for a positive occurrence, and twice for a disaster, is kept. It was created to speed communication at a time when information dissemination was slow, but now has a mostly commemorative role. It rang for the Titanic and more recently for the Twin Towers and the Asian tsunami. Nestled in its old wooden chest, it tells of the world flowing around Aqua, around Lloyd’s and indeed Britain. Physically separate from the rest of the world as an island, yet constantly interconnected. It seems to hark after the famous words by John Donne:

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

[John Donne, poem from Meditation XVII]

— Photo: the view of the Shard, the skyscraper designed by Renzo Piano, from the Tower Bridge.