In a Financial Times story published last week, a detailed worldwide ranking of VC investment was mentioned. This is a new concept and I thought we should explain how the ranking is calculated and what the results were.

We collected data from various information providers and combined them to create the rankings. (Inevitably apples were sometimes compared with "almost apples” but overall we think the picture is pretty accurate). The rankings cover the US, Canada, European countries, Australia, New Zealand, India and China. We thought it was appropriate to compare US states, which have huge firepower, with entire European countries. We couldn't find any public data on important countries such as South Korea, Japan, South Africa (if you know of reliable sources, please pass them on to us). A detailed breakdown of investment in India and China wasn't available (again, if such public data exists, please get in touch). We weighted the data according to the absolute levels of investment (40 per cent disclosed amounts, 40 per cent deals) and the relative concentration based on the total population in each geography (10 per cent by amount and 10 percent by deals per million people). In each category, the top performing geography was awarded a score of 100 and the others were calibrated accordingly.

The ranking produced a number of surprises. First, of the top five regions, only two were from the US - California (which was in overall first place) and Massachusetts. In third place, we find the UK, followed, unexpectedly, by Quebec and then Israel. The next five slots are occupied by US states. Given that not all areas of the world are covered and that we have not been able to split some of the larger territories (in particular India and China) into smaller chunks, we see the rankings as preliminary. They are still an intriguing view on where the action is.