This special episode of Breaking Banks begins with a mashup interview with the new Lord Mayor of London, Nicholas Lyons, Brett King and Emerge Everywhere host Jennifer Tescher. The Lord Mayor of London is the mayor of the City of London and the leader of the City of London Corporation, a municipal governing body covering the historic center of London and the location of much of the United Kingdom’s financial sector. As ambassador for the UK’s Financial & Professional Services, and accorded precedence over all individuals except the sovereign, he retains traditional powers, rights and privileges, and some ceremonial duties. Look for the Lord Mayor of London at the coronation of King Charles III.

As a top global financial center, The Lord Mayor of London wants to help companies grow, scale, and stay in London and the UK.  With London’s fintech success, he’s focusing on tech innovation across the board — green tech, biotech, life sciences, renewable tech — encouraging start-ups and looking to create more investment from the UK system as well as access to funding. He’s thinking 30 years ahead, framing options for the growth economy, and looking at the painful divide in society and widening gap in numeracy, financial literacy and financial inclusion —  initiatives he’s working hard to address in his mayoralty. Part of the answer lies in fintech, with London all about building bridges and partnerships.

Then Brett continues the investment theme with a conversation with Alex Sion, Managing Director, Motive Partners, mentor of hundreds of start-ups and lecturer on innovation, fintech and digital strategy having co-founded a neobank himself and having led innovation efforts at Citi and JP Morgan Chase. They discuss current challenges for banking and what has happened in the startup world particularly in fintech where Silicon Valley Bank was a big supporter and validator, and what the next chapter looks like. It’s all things fintech from a VC perspective.