When the financial markets start coughing, office markets quickly catch a cold: Book review of: Colin Lizieri. Towers of Capital. Office Markets and International Financial Services

“Where does property ‘fit’ into the dynamics of value creation under contemporary capitalism?” and “What about the economics of property?”, only recently did Christophers (2010: 94) address these questions to his fellow geographers. With Towers of Capital, Lizieri has now presented a long overdue book, which insightfully investigates the multifaceted – though primarily economic – phenomena of office markets, specifically in international financial centres (IFCs), and their strong entanglement with the financial markets. By writing this book, Lizieri follows a long tradition established by Coakley (1994), Daly (1982), or Pryke (1993, 1994) who more or less critically examined the early stages of the so-called financialisation and the eventual reification of office property into tradable financial assets (...)