most powerful cities on earth

The capital of Russia and indisputably one of the worlds most financially powerful cities, Moscow is home to the highest amount of the worlds billionaires and to Gazprom, the worlds largest natural gas exporter.

A major global financial city thanks in large part to the California Gold Rush, San Francisco originally built itself up with finance and tourism. Since the end of the 20th century, San Francisco has pushed into medical research and technology, evidenced by its role as headquarter of companies such as Facebook and Google.

The third in a threeway tie for (with San Francisco and Moscow), Washington, D.C. is politics first (but politics often means money) with 29% of jobs working for the federal government. On its own, the D.C. metropolitan area is the fourthlargest metro economy in the United States.

Famous for its watchmaking, Geneva comes onto our list at understandably so due to Switzerlands reputation as a banking centre. Genevas private banks are home to over $1 trillion (thats 1,000,000,000,000) in assets.

The first in a fourway tie for, Shanghai is the financial centre of mainland China. It should come as no shock that Shanghai has experienced doubledigit growth for almost every one of the past 20 years, largely due to its port: the busiest container port in the world.

Bearing a population of over 20 million people, Beijing has a powerful economy which tripled from 2004 to 2012. After Moscow, New York, and Hong Kong, Beijing has the fourth highest amount of resident billionaires.

Home to many large oil and gas companies drilling in the nearby waters, Oslo earned fDi magazines top spot in large European cities with economic potential.

The last in a fourway tie for Boston has an impressive financial services sector, especially in insurance and mutual funds (which locallybased Fidelity Investments helped go mainstream in the 1980s).

the OsakaKobe metropolitan area boasts a $341 billion combined GDP. Formerly the centre of Japanese commerce, the area is still home to major companies such as Panasonic and Sharp.

By far the largest city in Ireland, Dublin has, due to strong tax incentives, become the European home to many of the worlds largest companies including Google, Twitter, and Amazon. It also hosts offices of half of the worlds top 50 banks and top 20 insurance companies.