LONDON: London is Europe’s most attractive city for technology start-ups, despite a sharp slowdown last year, a study showed on Wednesday.

With Brexit looming, the Mayor’s promotional agency London & Partners said that £1.8 billion ($2.3bn, 2.0bn euros) was invested in fledgling tech businesses in 2018.

That represented a near 30 per cent slump on 2017 and was the first slowdown in six years, L&P said in a statement.

But London’s 2018 total was still double the level of Berlin, which stood in second place at 936.53 million, while Paris was third with 797.04 million.

Investment is being propelled by a “significant” increase in funding for emerging sectors such as fintech — or financial technology — as well as Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain.

Britain’s entire tech start-up sector raised almost £2.5bn last year, down 20.2pc from 2017.

Published in Dawn, January 10th, 2019