Mainhattan is a term referring to Frankfurt's skyline, especially that of its central business district, the Bankenviertel. The word is a portmanteau of Main, the river on which Frankfurt lies, and Manhattan, a reference to the inner city area's visually impressive high rises and skyscrapers, a special feature for a European city. Together with the historically important Imperial Cathedral of Saint Bartholomew and St. Paul's Church, these buildings form the skyline of the city.
The first tall buildings were built in the 1960s. Banks and other financial institutions settled there, which resulted in the district also being referred to as "Bankfurt" (Bankford). Originally, both expressions were sometimes used derisively, but the connotation has changed to a purely positive one. [1] [2]
The seat of the European Central Bank is located in Mainhattan. The Commerzbank Tower was the tallest building in the European Union until the Shard in London was built. After the United Kingdom voted to withdraw from the European Union (Brexit), plans were made for several financial institutions to move from the City of London to Mainhattan. [3] [4] [5] However, a report by the think tank New Financial found that even after Brexit, there is still around five times more international financial activity in the UK than in France and Germany, suggesting that London will remain the most important financial centre on the European continent, ahead of Paris and Frankfurt. [6] 50°06′38″N8°40′27″E / 50.11056°N 8.67417°E
Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main, is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany, and it is the only city in the country rated as an "alpha world city" according to GaWC. Located in the foreland of the Taunus on its namesake Main River, it forms a continuous conurbation with the neighboring city of Offenbach am Main and its urban area has a population of over 2.3 million. The city is the heart of the larger Rhine-Main metropolitan region, which has a population of more than 5.8 million and is Germany's second-largest metropolitan region after the Rhine-Ruhr region. Frankfurt's central business district lies about 90 km (56 mi) northwest of the geographic center of the EU at Gadheim in Lower Franconia. Like France and Franconia, the city is named after the Franks. Frankfurt is the largest city in the Rhenish Franconian dialect area.
IDA Ireland is the agency responsible for the attraction and retention of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) into Ireland. The agency was founded in 1949 as the Industrial Development Authority and placed on a statutory footing a year later. In 1969 it became a non-commercial autonomous state-sponsored body. Today it is a semi-state body that plays an important role in Ireland's relationship with foreign investors, with multinationals accounting for 10.2% of employment and 66% of Irish exports. The agency partners with investors to help them to begin or expand their operations in the Irish market. It provides funding support to research and development projects, and has a number of direct support mechanisms, including employment and training grants.
Nomura Securities Co., Ltd. is a Japanese financial services company and a wholly owned subsidiary of Nomura Holdings, Inc. (NHI), which forms part of the Nomura Group. It plays a central role in the securities business, the group's core business. Nomura is a financial services group and global investment bank. Based in Tokyo, Japan, with regional headquarters in Hong Kong, London, and New York, Nomura employs about 26,000 staff worldwide; it is known as Nomura Securities International in the US, and Nomura International plc. in EMEA. It operates through five business divisions: retail, global markets, investment banking, merchant banking, and asset management.
Trianon is a 45-storey, 186 m (610 ft) skyscraper in the Westend-Süd district of Frankfurt, Germany, completed in 1993. It is the headquarters for DekaBank; other tenants are Deutsche Bundesbank and Franklin Templeton. Atop the building is an inverted pyramid suspended from the three corners. As of 2023, the tower is the eighth-tallest skyscraper in Frankfurt and also in Germany.
Manhattanization is a neologism coined to describe the construction of many tall or densely situated buildings, which transforms the appearance and character of a city to what is similar to Manhattan, the most densely populated borough of New York City. It was a pejorative word used by critics of the highrise buildings built in San Francisco during the 1960s and 1970s, who claimed the skyscrapers would block views of the bay and the surrounding hills. With careful urban planning, the phenomenon became more accepted in time. The term also gained usage as a buzzword for high-density developments in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Dubai, and Miami in the early 2000s and again in the 2010s. Another example is the high rise development in Toronto since 2007, as well as rapid development of skyscrapers in Hong Kong and Tokyo since the 1970s, eventually allowing Hong Kong to possess more skyscrapers than New York. The term has even been applied to many smaller US cities that have seen a large spike in downtown high rise rental buildings since the 21st century. Nonetheless, these cities would have to multiply their populations many times over to match the population density of Manhattan, though this is a biased comparison between a city and a district, as even the other four "outer boroughs" of New York City would have to nearly triple in population to match Manhattan's current density.
A financial centre or financial hub is a location with a concentration of participants in banking, asset management, insurance or financial markets with venues and supporting services for these activities to take place. Participants can include financial intermediaries, institutional investors, and issuers. Trading activity can take place on venues such as exchanges and involve clearing houses, although many transactions take place over-the-counter (OTC), that is directly between participants. Financial centres usually host companies that offer a wide range of financial services, for example relating to mergers and acquisitions, public offerings, or corporate actions; or which participate in other areas of finance, such as private equity, hedge funds, and reinsurance. Ancillary financial services include rating agencies, as well as provision of related professional services, particularly legal advice and accounting services.
The economy of London is dominated by service industries, particularly financial services and associated professional services, which have strong links with the economy in other parts of the United Kingdom (UK) and internationally. In addition to being the capital city of the United Kingdom, London is one of the world's leading financial centres for international business and commerce and is one of the "command centres" for the global economy.
The Deutsche Bank Twin Towers, also known as Deutsche Bank Headquarters, is a twin tower skyscraper complex in the Westend-Süd district of Frankfurt, Germany. Both towers rise to 155 m (509 ft) and serve as headquarters for Deutsche Bank, the largest bank in Germany.
Bankenviertel is the name of the central business district in Frankfurt, Germany where many banks, insurance companies, and other financial institutions are located. It is the most important German financial hub, if not one of the largest in Europe along with La Défense in the Paris aire urbaine and London's City and Canary Wharf.
On 23 June 2016, a referendum, commonly referred to as the EU referendum or the Brexit referendum, took place in the United Kingdom (UK) and Gibraltar to ask the electorate whether the country should remain a member of, or leave, the European Union (EU). It was organised and facilitated through the European Union Referendum Act 2015 and the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. The referendum resulted in 51.9% of the votes cast being in favour of leaving the EU. Although the referendum was legally non-binding, the government of the time promised to implement the result.
Brexit was the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020. The UK is the only sovereign country to have left the EU. The UK had been a member state of the EU or its predecessor the European Communities (EC), sometimes both at the same time, since 1 January 1973. Following Brexit, EU law and the Court of Justice of the European Union no longer have primacy over British laws. The European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 retains relevant EU law as domestic law, which the UK can amend or repeal.
The Regional Authority of Frankfurt Rhein-Main is the cooperation body of the administratively fragmented Frankfurt am Main urban area and the common authority for Frankfurt am Main and its 75 neighboring communities. It manages and coordinates the regional development of Frankfurt am Main and its suburbs. It also represents the Frankfurt urban area nationally and internationally and is responsible for the strategic alignment of the local decision-making, for the development of a common regional image and an improved regional harmonisation. The authority draws up and updates the regional preparatory land use plans, local development and zoning plans, and carries out an intensive regional monitoring to coordinate the development of the urban region.
After the British EU membership referendum held on 23 June 2016, in which a majority voted to leave the European Union, the United Kingdom experienced political and economic upsets, with spillover effects across the rest of the European Union and the wider world. Prime Minister David Cameron, who had campaigned for Remain, announced his resignation on 24 June, triggering a Conservative leadership election, won by Home Secretary Theresa May. Following Leader of the Opposition Jeremy Corbyn's loss of a motion of no confidence among the Parliamentary Labour Party, he also faced a leadership challenge, which he won. Nigel Farage stepped down from leadership of the pro-Leave party UKIP in July. After the elected party leader resigned, Farage then became the party's interim leader on 5 October until Paul Nuttall was elected leader on 28 November.
Between 2017 and 2019, representatives of the United Kingdom and the European Union negotiated the terms for Brexit, the planned withdrawal of the UK from the EU. These negotiations arose following the decision of the Parliament of the United Kingdom to invoke Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union, following the UK's EU membership referendum on 23 June 2016.
The economic effects of Brexit were a major area of debate during and after the referendum on UK membership of the European Union. The majority of economists believe that Brexit is likely to harm the UK's economy and reduce its real per capita income in the long term, and the referendum itself damaged the economy. It is likely to produce a large decline in immigration from countries in the European Economic Area (EEA) to the UK, and poses challenges for British higher education and academic research.
The Capital Markets Union (CMU) is an economic policy initiative launched by the former president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Junker in the initial exposition of his policy agenda on 15 July 2014. The main target was to create a single market for capital in the whole territory of the EU by the end of 2019. The reasoning behind the idea was to address the issue that corporate finance relies on debt (i.e. bank loans) and the fact that capital markets in Europe were not sufficiently integrated so as to protect the EU and especially the Eurozone from future crisis. The Five Presidents Report of June 2015 proposed the CMU in order to complement the Banking union of the European Union and eventually finish the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) project. The CMU is supposed to attract 2000 billion dollars more on the European capital markets, on the long-term.
Fish for finance is a possible trade-off that has been considered by both sides in the trade negotiations between the United Kingdom and the European Union (EU) over their future relationship following Brexit in January 2020. The Brexit withdrawal agreement between the two parties called for an agreement on fisheries to be concluded by June 2020, followed by an agreement on financial services at the end of July, deadlines which were both missed. Both were expected to be part of the final EU–UK trade agreement reached by the end of 2020, the end of the Brexit transition period. The final agreement had some broad outlines for a future fishing deal, primarily gradual EU concessions of fishing quota in UK waters, but was largely silent on finance.
Four, also known as Four Frankfurt, is a major, luxury mixed-use skyscraper project in Frankfurt, consisting of a complex of four skyscrapers under construction. It is located in the area known as the Deutsche Bank triangle in the Innenstadt borough. The tallest skyscraper will have a height of 233 metres (764 ft), making it Europe's largest residential tower by occupied floor space. Germany's largest building, the Commerzbank Tower is larger by building height but not when measured by occupied floor space height. By total building height it is both Frankfurt and Germany's third-tallest building upon its estimated completion in 2023. Dutch star-architect and student of Zaha Hadid, Ben van Berkel has designed and developed the building.