A London Booster Switches to New York’s Team

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

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In baseball terms, Diana Torres has signed with the Yankees after playing for the Red Sox.

About two years ago, Ms. Torres, a British transplant , launched the New York office for Think London, a group whose primary mission is to get American businesses to set up shop in the British capital. Now, with competition growing fiercer between New York and London for financial security businesses, tourists, and others investment, Ms. Torres has switched teams. The Cambridge University graduate has been tapped by the Partnership for New York City to run a new Office of Global Competitiveness. Meaning, essentially, that she’ll be working for the other side.

“I made a decision,” Ms. Torres said during a recent interview at a coffee shop in Lower Manhattan. “I live here, I feel American, although I realize I don’t sound American, and, I just think New York is always going to have more mojo than London.”

Ms. Torres’s switch comes at a crucial time in the global race for financial and capital market dominance. In the last year, the competition between New York and other international cities has been the topic of two major reports and has been the subject of conversations from boardrooms to cocktail parties. Today, Mayor Bloomberg will be in London to talk about congestion pricing, an idea he is pushing to reduce traffic in New York, and tomorrow he is scheduled to speak at a conference the Economist magazine is hosting on the city’s future as a business hub.

Mr. Bloomberg and Senator Schumer released a report in January warning that if no federal action is taken to relax the regulatory environment here and tamp down the litigious corporate atmosphere, New York will lose its place as the global financial capital.

The report, conducted by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., predicted that New York would lose between 4% and 7% of the global finance pie in the next five years if nothing is done.

Ms. Torres, who moved to New York seven years ago, was until last month working to bring business to Britain, first as marketing director of a hotel group, then as owner of her own travel business, and finally to launch Think London’s New York office. While no one is suggesting the defection of an individual to New York’s team from London’s is going to change global marketplaces, it is a coup. The president and CEO of the Partnership, Kathryn Wylde, said that Ms. Torres’s “London point of view” will broaden he organization’s approach. Still, she noted that the two cities regularly collaborate and that many of the partnership’s members have offices in both cities.

Ms. Torres, who is half American but grew up in England, also noted that her assignment for the Partnership, which deals with New York’s global position, is far broader than it was at Think London.

Like Mr. Bloomberg, she says diversifying New York’s economy, which currently relies on the financial services sector for 36% of its tax base, is key.

Think London’s vice president for business development for the West Coast, Richard Stanaro, said Ms. Torres’s departure is a loss, but that there are plenty of others still plugging away at the mission. Also, he said the goal of the organization is to secure investment from around the globe, not just from New York. The organization has recently opened offices in Beijing and San Francisco, and is planning to open in Mumbai soon.

Ms. Torres said one of the key differences between the two cities is their treatment from the federal government.

“One of the biggest issues that New York faces that London does not is that it is one state in a federal system,” she said. “London by contrast is the engine of the national economy and it’s treated as such by the national government. New York is the engine of the national economy here, but it’s not treated as such by the federal government.”

In many ways, she said, her move was good for Think London too.

“I think that they were genuinely sorry to see me go, but I think that to some extent the fact that I am now working for the partnership is a link for them with the organization,” she said.


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