Cass Business School moved to new premises in the London Borough of Islington, and changed its name as part of a strategy formed by Lord Currie of Marylebone, who had become Dean the year before, to compete as an international business school in a market dominated by US universities. The school had previously been spread out across the City of London's mainly residential Barbican Centre development. Half of the £40 million funding for the new building came from the reserves of City, University of London. The school also received a gift from Sir John Cass's Foundation, founded in 1748 to educate children in
City of London School as a classical scholar went on to become the British Prime Minister. The school eventually outgrew its original site. While many public schools moved away from Greater London in the late Nineteenth Century, a joint decision was made by the school's management and the school committee to stay in the capital as it was deemed a stimulating environment for education by many. By a further Act of Parliament, the City of London School Act 1879 (c.lxiii), it was empowered to move to a new site at Blackfriars on the Victoria Embankment overlooking the Thames (still in the City of London).