Manchester

Manchester is the fastest-growing city region outside of London, and rated as Britain's most creative city.

It's little wonder that the 2007 UK Cities Monitor charting the views of senior executives, published by Cushman and Wakefield, named Manchester second only to London as best location for business. European Cities Monitor also placed it among the top 20 "best cities to locate a business today" and as a great prospect if you are looking for an investment opportunity.

Manchester is the largest and fastest growing centre for financial, professional and legal services outside London, with more than 200,000 employed within the sector. As England's largest regional corporate finance and stock-broking centre, 60 banks (40 overseas-owned) are based in Manchester, including the Bank of New York and The Royal Bank of Scotland. Meanwhile, the BBC's announcement that it will move five departments and around 1,500 jobs to Salford Mediacity:uk further confirms Manchester's position as an increasingly influential British media hub.

Manchester's educational strength is internationally renowned, with over 100,000 students based within its four city universities. The University of Manchester, the UK's largest single site university and one of the largest in Europe, generates an annual turnover of £500 million, while Manchester Business School is rated as the third best outside America by the influential Forbes magazine.

Manchester International Airport provides excellent accessibility to domestic and international markets. It serves over 200 worldwide destinations, including 10 US airports. It is the UK's third largest airport (the largest outside of London), handling over 22 million passengers annually. As capacity expands, passenger numbers are expected to reach 42 million per year by 2015. By train, recent modernisation of the West Coast main line has reduced Manchester-London journey times to just over two hours, with 50 trains per day.

Above all, competitive business costs have created a robust economy that features 65 of the FTSE100 companies. Businesses based in Manchester benefit from a highly competitive cost-base when compared to London and other European capitals, with Manchester one of the top 10 cities in Europe for affordability and availability of office space.