Global Financial Centres Index

The Global Financial Centres Index is a ranking of the competitiveness of financial centres based on 26,629 financial centre assessments from an online questionnaire together with over 60 indices. It is compiled by Z/Yen Group and published twice a year by the City of London Corporation.

Ranking

The ranking is an aggregate of indices from five key areas: people, business environment, market access, infrastructure and general competitiveness. The current top 20 places are:

• =1 London, United Kingdom
• =1 New York City, United States
• 3 Hong Kong, Hong Kong(People's Republic of China)
• 4 Singapore, Singapore
• 5 Tokyo, Japan
• 6 Chicago, United States
• 7 Zurich, Switzerland
• 8 Geneva, Switzerland
• =9 Shenzhen, People's Republic of China
• =9 Sydney, Australia
• 11 Shanghai, People's Republic of China
• 12 Toronto, Canada
• 13 Frankfurt, Germany
• 14 Boston, United States
• =15 Beijing, People's Republic of China
• =15 San Francisco, United States
• 17 Washington D.C., United States
• =18 Jersey
• =18 Luxembourg
• 20 Paris, France

Key areas

The people index summarises the availability of a skilled workforce, the flexibility of the labour market, the quality of the business education and the skillset of the workforce. The business environment aggregates and values the regulation, tax rates, levels of corruption, economic freedom and how difficult in general it is to do business. To measure regulation an online questionnaire has been used. The market access index looks at the various equities and bonds available. The volume and value of trading but also the cluster effect of the number of different financial service companies at the location influence the index. The infrastructure index furthermost accounts to the price of real estate at the location. Other factors such as public transport have a minor impact. General competitiveness relies on more traditional economic factors as price level, quality of life and economic sentiment.

Industry sectors

The ranking does sub rankings in the main area of financial services as banking, asset management, insurance, professional services, government and regulation.

External links

• Questionnaire and Analysis