Should Soho ban bankers?

A private member’s club, Soho House, is ditching bankers and returning to its creative industries roots. Should the rest of Soho - traditionally London’s creative heart - do the same?


The club (pictured left), the first of a chain of Soho Houses now in Berlin, New York and Hollywood, is returning its gaze for admissions on the creative industries. Also nearby in Soho, the Groucho Club (picture right), founded in 1985 by a group of publishers wanting an alternative to London's stuffy gentlemen's clubs, looks for applicants working in "Arts and Media." Blacks, just round the corner, is known for theatrical types.

"There is no strict anti-banker policy but our clubs are very much rooted in the creative industries," said a London-based Soho House spokesperson. Bankers have traditionally joined more sedate clubs, like the Athenaeum Club (above) in Mayfair or the City.

More bankers than creatives

But many clubs have had a recent influx of those in the financial services sector who earn far more than creatives - these clubs cost around £1000 per year to join. This is fine for keeping the club’s bars going, but might not make for a great mix of members in the long run.

The reason clubs focus on a specific sector is the similar to the reason for cities or regions to. By having people nearby with similar skills and interests, it can stimulate collaboration, new ideas, and hopefully generate new business. It is a small scale version of the economic benefits of industrial clustering that academics like Michael Porter developed over thirty years ago. By bringing similar businesses together, they benefited from access to skilled staff, learning from each other, and collaborations.

But what about Soho itself?

The creative industries benefit more than most from these advantages as they tend to be small, fleet footed businesses. And there is a definite cluster in Soho, especially in film, advertising and post-production, that has remained there despite many of the advantages for close location being dissolved by digital technologies. Recently the creative vibe has attracted increasing numbers of high-rent paying banks and financial services businesses, who can pay more than the creative businesses.

And so a wider point is, if there are too many bankers in Soho’s clubs, are there too many bankers in Soho?


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