London, New York, Tokyo and...Dublin?

There's no need to head overseas for experience of working in an international financial centre - Dublin itself is emerging as a global player.

The Irish capital leapfrogged Edinburgh to rank 15th in the Global Financial Centres Index, a survey of the top 50 financial centres, beating off competition from fund admin centres like Luxembourg (17th) and Edinburgh (20th) in the process.

The report, commissioned by the City of London Corporation, covers everything from banking, insurance and asset management, making Dublin's achievement all the more impressive. Rankings are based on five criteria - people, business environment, market access, infrastructure and general competitiveness. Anyone can vote, but the authors assure us the software is sophisticated enough to see if there's any vote-rigging going on, so if Mumbai suddenly makes it into the top five, it's going to know something is fishy.

Z/Yen's Michael Mainelli, one of report's authors, says: "Dublin doesn't have an important international exchange, nor does it perform a lot of front-office functions, yet it produced an amazingly strong showing."

He adds: "It has not done this through lax regulation, which one might argue other offshore centres are doing, but instead it has a base of good, solid, well-trained people, it is a friendly centre for business, and has light-touch tax as opposed to light-touch regulation."

London retains the top spot, and has stretched its lead over second-placed New York.