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First Minister to meet London Lord Mayor
06/03/2009
First Minister Alex Salmond will hold his first meeting with the Lord Mayor of the City of London, Alderman Ian Luder, today.
The meeting is the first in a series that will see the FM meeting senior figures in the financial services sector internationally, including next month in Shanghai and Hong Kong, and is part of Scottish Government efforts to promote Scotland's financial services sector and attract new investment.
Mr Salmond said:
"Scotland's wide-ranging financial services industry is a crucial sector of the Scottish economy and the skills and adaptability of our financial workforce are truly world class.
"This is clearly a difficult period internationally but it is encouraging that many sections of Scotland's financial services industry, like pensions and insurance, are continuing to perform well - only last month esure announced it would expand its Scottish operations and create 500 new, permanent jobs and this week Tesco Personal Finance announced its headquarters in Edinburgh and the creation of 200 jobs.
"This Government is working to maximise opportunities for Scotland during this time of economic challenge.
"We have developed a robust and innovative six-point economic recovery programme aimed at stimulating growth, for example through the recently announced creation of a financial sector Jobs Taskforce to ensure maximum levels of employment and high level skills are retained in Scotland.
"Scotland continues to be a key location for the financial services industry. Through developing stronger relations with financial sectors worldwide and working in partnership with the financial services industry I am confident we can successfully market Scotland as a prime location for investment and growth.
"Scotland has strong and successful financial services businesses, offers compelling cost and skills advantages and that will help us attract new companies and jobs to Scotland."
Mr Luder said:
"As the Lord Mayor of the City, I support and promote the financial and professional services across the UK - including those in Scotland. I am looking forward to meeting with the First Minister.
"Together we are an international financial centre which is excellent at creating products that work for the international market - be it carbon emissions trading or sharia compliant products. We remain anti-protectionist and open to investment. We have great clusters of skills, a very international population, and very desirable places for people with financial services skills to live in.
"I think the most important thing at this time is that we work to get out of this recession as soon as possible, and work together to strengthen our collective financial services industries, which give so much to each other."