Prospective employees looking for financial services jobs might be more successful if they are bi- or multilingual.
That is the suggestion of the CILT, the National Centre for Languages, which has suggested that international traders can be more successful in their dealings with specific countries if they are able to speak the language.
Teresa Tinsley, director of communications at the organisation, said that there is growing competition in the business world due to the fact that more workers from overseas are able to speak English as well as their native languages.
"It's about getting a competitive edge, being able to forge relationships … understanding the markets that you are dealing with," she explained. "For all those things, it's really important to use languages.
"British industry can and does recruit foreign native speakers for their jobs with languages, so it impacts on the individual in terms of their employability as well as on the impact on British industry."
She was speaking after A-level results for the 2009/10 academic year revealed that entries for Spanish are up by four per cent on last year, although entries for French and German fell (by 3.4 per cent and 3.8 per cent respectively).
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