London still best business city in Europe

LONDON (Reuters) - Warsaw has pipped Moscow as the European city that can expect the biggest influx of companies over the next five years, while London remains the best for locating a business, a survey said.

Thirty-six of Europe's 500 largest companies said Warsaw was the city they next intended to expand to. Thirty-five respondents picked Moscow, Cushman & Wakefield's European Cities Monitor showed.

London retained its top ranking as the best business city in Europe, a position it has held since 1990 when the survey began, followed by Paris and Frankfurt.

Prague and Warsaw were the biggest risers, ranked 21st and 23rd respectively from their bottom-of-table slots in 1990.

"All of the key central and eastern European cities have seen increases in their position, most buoyed by EU accession," the survey said.

Barcelona, fourth, and Brussels, fifth, rounded out the top five cities, followed by Madrid, Munich, Amsterdam, Berlin and Milan.

Birmingham was the biggest riser in the survey this year, moving up seven places to 14th position.

The 34 cities included in the survey were also ranked according to quality of life, telecommunications, access to markets, quality of staff, cost of office space and transport links.

(Reporting by Andrew Macdonald; editing by John Stonestreet)