Wimbledon Effect

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The Wimbledon Effect is a chiefly British and Japanese analogy (which possibly originated in Japan[1][2]) which compares the tennis fame of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in Wimbledon, London with the economic success of the United Kingdom's financial services industries - especially those clustered in the City of London. The point of the analogy is that the All England Club and the City are highly successful despite the lack of local champions.

London's financial industry has boomed since the deregulation of UK financial markets (the "Big Bang") in the 1980s under the Thatcher government - but has also become dominated by foreign companies, especially American investment banks, rather than British firms (a result opposite to the original intention of the reforms).

The analogy is typically used to mark a debate over whether it matters if an industry is primarily domestically owned if easing of foreign ownership restrictions allows the economy to benefit from foreign investment and increased global competition. The phrase can be used positively to assert the economic success of liberal attitudes towards foreign ownership (and sometimes to emphasize that such attitudes promote a level playing field for domestic and foreign interests alike); or it can be used negatively to emphasize how these policies have eroded a nation's ability to produce globally leading domestic companies. This opposing perspective is represented by economic patriotism and "national champion" policies.

The analogy has also been used in policy discourses outside Britain - most notably in the business discourse of Japan [3][4], whose financial markets and other parts of the economy (as of 2006) have not yet been substantially opened up to foreign competition compared with its international peers. It has also, for instance, been used in banking reform debates in South Korea [5] as well as in discussing Business Process Outsourcing in India [6].