For years, America has been the financial super power of the world and New York has been the lead financial centre. But now, according to the World Economic Forum(Geneva) findings, London is the new world financial centre. Getting ranked by the WEF is no cake walk because you are competing with 55 nations on 120 criteria based on the sophistication, stability, business environment favorableness, equity and bond market size, technological infrastructure,  human per capita, and ease of loan accessibility.

On all these factors, Britain seems to have scored good points even though its economical hardships were up from last year. Thanks to its foreign exchange and perfect insurance systems! The country has made it to the numero uno position majorly because of these factors. America on the other hand, has climbed down the ladder from the 1st to the 3rd position from last year. America is still the richest nation, but the economic instability and frail banking conditions have resulted in this present downfall. Australia, surprisingly made great progress as it leaped nine positions up from last year to occupy the 2nd position. Sound finances, minimum national debt and easily accessible consumer loan are perceivable reasons for this success.

Do you think the Britain supremacy in the financial sector is going to be a long lasting one? It doesn’t look it! Britain is still under recession and the US is showing signs of recovery in gross domestic product in the last quarter of this year. But Britain being strictly institutional is not being looked upon favorably by hedge investors and financial funding firms. The higher regulation and tax features of the country are encouraging them to move out of the country.

Most of the highly industrialized nations were seen to have suffered the most during this recession and have gone down the WEF ranking. In the meantime, other countries have taken their place. In this context, you won’t find France and Germany in the top 10 positions either. They’ve gone down to the 11th and 12th places. They are some of the badly hit countries of the recession. In the meantime nations like Brazil, Chile and Malaysia have filled the void created by the France and Germany in the top 10 rank list. If you can observe the trend of the downfall, you can see that those countries with a global economy suffered the most, while others which were not much in the global economic scenario were least affected by the downturn. This is the reason you see Germany and France being affected by the downfall, while the other countries, like Brazil, Chile and Malaysia climb up the economical ladder.

But the road is not smooth for the emerging economies either. If they really want to maintain their growth they need to have developed infrastructure, perfect legal and regulatory economic enforcements, and strong corporate governance.  Thus this economic prosperity of some countries makes me wonder if it is for real or an illusion owing to the downfall of other countries.