Mayor Bloomberg and many other wise men want to be sure nothing changes New York’s status as the financial center of the universe. They face an uphill battle.

Sarbanes-Oxley has disaffected the international financial community, lengthening New York’s odds, while England has come on strong as a leading business hub in recent years. London has benefited from its convenient location bridging East and West, its historic embrace of international trade, and, of course, the fact that the English speak English.

Another often-overlooked ingredient in this competitive mix is the Queen’s Awards for Enterprise. The 2007 winners of these accolades were just announced, timed to celebrate the queen’s birthday, and the Financial Times dedicated two pages to the news. The companies, ranging from fashion chain Monsoon to “heritage business” Edinburgh Military Tattoo, must feel terrific about themselves.

When was the last time we celebrated our corporations?

Consider: One of the companies recognized by the queen was the British subsidiary of Motorola, “for innovation by its fast wireless broadband transmission equipment business in Devon.” That’s a breath of fresh air for the management of Motorola, which is being harangued and harassed in America by Carl Icahn, among others, for slippage in margins, sales, and stock price. Mainly, though, the company is under the gun to come up with a successor to the Razr, which now sells at a fraction of its original price. It is also being lambasted for having the audacity to have some excess cash on its balance sheet. How nice it must be for the company to have someone tap it on the corporate head for cleverness.

While the queen was handing out her awards to favored companies in Britain, the Democratic House of Representatives was passing a bill allowing shareholders to vote on the pay packages of public company officials. Where would you rather run a business?

Every time a private equity billionaire talks about the growth of his industry, he mentions how easy it is to lure corporate CEOs over to the private world. Not only do they get to make decisions that are in the long-term best interests of their companies unfettered by quarterly earnings paranoia, they can also elude the hot glare of a critical press. Being treated as a potential felon can take a toll.

The consequences of our CEOs feeling beleaguered may be direr than you think. One of the great concerns about the economy at present is that capital spending has dipped sharply in recent months, despite record profits, low borrowing rates, and high cash levels on corporate balance sheets.

What are companies doing instead with their money? They are buying in their own shares and going private; BusinessWeek says about $602 billion was spent in this way (by nonfinancials alone) last year. Managers are so concerned about being set upon by disgruntled or, worse, activist shareholders that they are spending their money literally boosting their share price. Not a good trend for the country.

We need to buck up our corporate leaders, give them their confidence back, make them feel good about themselves.

I recommend that we institute our very own Queen’s Awards, just to let businesses know that we appreciate them. One small problem is that we do not have a queen. For the life of me I can’t come up with an appropriate American substitute. There is no one that comes to mind who is universally respected in our country (I’m not sure that’s the case in England either).

Perhaps the best choice here would be Warren Buffett, but people would immediately cry foul were he to undertake such a role. No doubt he would honor those companies that he holds in his portfolio, and therefore be accused of self-dealing.

I think the reasonable thing would be to ask Elizabeth if she wouldn’t mind bestowing some awards on American companies, and then just ask people to e-mail suggested recipients to her. That’s probably what happens in England anyway.

So, here are my suggestions for our own Queen’s Awards:

We should recognize Starbucks with a “major assist” award for having created an enormous new distribution channel for the woebegone music industry. Starbucks has become a leading CD vendor, mainly by hawking the industry’s wares to the very sleepy standing in line to buy coffee. And, for creating the “Starbucks experience” that we actually never knew existed until the chairman rebuked his employees for having lost it.

Second, we should bestow upon Blackstone an “opportunity knocks” award. For a decade Blackstone sold CEOs on the virtues of running a private company, and then decided it was time for Blackstone’s very own IPO. The propensity to flip-flop has not affected their basic business plan, however. The group shows a remarkable talent for buying at the bottom and selling at the top.

We have to give Apple an “incredibly cool” award for always coming up with something that every person under the age of 30 has to own. The newest item — the “iPhone” — represents all that is great about the company, and about the enduring ability of American corporations to lead the global technology charge.

Our “our heart is in the right place” award goes to Wal-Mart, for its unflagging efforts to counter the unflattering public relations campaign waged against the company by a thwarted union. Wal-Mart has undertaken some very worthwhile and largely unacknowledged programs, including recent efforts to promote “green” products and to devise an extensive and creative heath insurance program for its employees.

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