New York has overtaken London as the world's most attractive financial centre, a survey said on Wednesday, as Britain's decision to leave the European Union prompts banks to shift jobs out of the city to preserve access to Europe's single market.

Since Britain voted to leave the EU more than two years ago, some of the world’s most powerful finance companies in London have been searching for a way to preserve the existing cross-border flow of trading after it leaves the bloc in 2019.

New York took first place, followed by London, Hong Kong and Singapore in the Z/Yen global financial centres index, which ranks 100 financial centres on factors such as infrastructure and access to high quality staff.

Malta, which is categorised as an 'evolving centre' in a local context, was in 88th position in the report, down 11 places from the previous one, in spite of a slight improvement in its rating score from 561 to 564.

• The number of financial centres in the main index has increased from 96
to 100 with the addition of Cape Town, GIFT City (Gujarat), Hangzhou, and Sofia
from the associate centres list. There are 10 associate centres awaiting potential
inclusion in the main index.

• GFCI 24 was compiled using 137 instrumental factors. These quantitative
measures are provided by third parties including the World Bank, The Economist
Intelligence Unit, the OECD, and the United Nations. Details can be found in
Appendix 4.

• The instrumental factors were combined with 31,326 financial centre assessments provided by respondents to the GFCI online questionnaire

• Z/Yen Group is a leading thinktank in the City of London

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