Australia fiollows the UK among top financial centres

The World Economic Forum, which released its rankings of the world's leading financial systems and capital markets, has ranked the UK as the leading global financial centre, displacing the US to the third position in its list of 55 top financial developed countries.

The forum, best known for its Davos Economic Summit, factors in over 120 variables including institutional and business environments, financial stability and size and depth of capital markets to determine rankings of various countries.

Though most countries' ratings dropped as a result of the financial crisis Australia proved to be an exception and was the only country among the top 10 to see a positive change in its overall score. It moved to the second spot after the UK.

Singapore's rating as a financial centre also improved considerably as it shot up from 10th to the fourth because of the way the financial system weathered the global recession.

According to James Bilodeau, one of the study's authors, Australia performed very well on several counts related to the areas and though there were some distresses in the system the forum found strength in the banking system from the view of sovereign debt and general strength across other areas. The banks are extremely efficient to the measures that we have captured he said.

He added that he forum scales size by GDP as a measure of depth and Australia had done well there and the financial markets were also strong.