London increases lead over Paris as top location: survey

London has increased its lead over Paris as the top European city for locating a business, according to the latest European Cities Monitor (ECM) - the annual location survey carried out by Cushman & Wakefield.

The survey, based on interviews with senior staff responsible for locations at 500 top European companies, looks as factors regarded as important when deciding where to locate and then compares the performance of 33 of Europe’s leading business cities on each factor.

In this year's ECM, the UK capital ranked first in half of the 12 categories. London has improved its performance in areas such as the economic climate, up three places to number two, while it fell nine places to 25th in terms of the cost of staff. Overall, London received a weighted score of 0.92 this year, up from 0.91 the previous year while runner-up Paris slipped to 0.57 from 0.59. In 1990, the first year of the annual survey, London received a score of 0.81 while Paris came in at 0.66.

Behind London and Paris comes Frankfurt, and then the closely grouped cities of Barcelona, Amsterdam and Brussels, with Amsterdam just overtaking Brussels this year. The survey also highlighted the emergence of regional cities, with Geneva, Lyon and Manchester the three biggest risers in the rankings, coming in at 12th, 17th and 18th place respectively.

The survey noted that eastern cities outside the European Union are seen as representing the greatest business opportunity for European companies. Moscow increased its lead over Bucharest and Istanbul as the city seen as representing the greatest business opportunity.

This year, the availability of qualified staff was considered ‘absolutely essential’ by 62% of respondents and overtook access to markets as the number one factor when deciding upon location. The number three factor was quality of telecommunications, which this year overtook external transport links.