Financial centre of the 19th century. After 1870, Berlin and New York grew to become major financial centres mainly serving their national economies. An array of smaller international financial centers found market niches, such as Amsterdam, Brussels, Zurich, and Geneva. London remained the leading international financial center in the four decades leading up to World War I. Since then, London and New York have developed leading positions in different activities and some non-Western financial centres have grown in prominence, notably Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore. In Asia, Tokyo emerged as a major financial centre in the 1980s as the Japanese economy became
Independent Financial Centre of the Americas Independent Financial Centre of the Americas The Independent Financial Centre of the Americas (IFCA) is the world's first privately operated and independently regulated international financial centre. It was officially established on 10 March 2006 and is being built and operated in the city of Guayacanes in the Dominican Republic. If all goes well the centre could be up and running by 2009 and would serve as the capital markets hub for the Americas, similar to The Dubai International Financial Center in the Middle East. It is considered one of the most ambitious projects undertaken in the regions recent history and