UK Europe's top 'unicorn' sanctuary for tech start-ups

One-third of 'unicorns' worth more than $1bn founded in the UK - more than any other country in Europe

The UK is the place in Europe to found a technology company, according to technology investment bank GP Bullhound.

According to GP Bullhound, there are now 47 private technology companies worth more than $1bn and one third of them - 18 - were founded in the UK.

These companies include fashion e-tailer Asos, money transfer company Transferwise and property search website Zoopla. GP Bullhound's list also includes augmented reality company Blippar and Anaplan, a business planning software company that shifted its base from the UK to San Francisco.

Perhaps reflecting the flaky nature of estimating companies' values, Dan Wagner's Powa Technologies has been erased from the list after it embarrassingly crashed and burned, after blowing more than £140m of investors' money and delivering very little in the way of revenues in return. It had been valued by GP Bullhound (and its founder) at $3bn.

Despite the profusion of UK companies, Sweden's Spotify is identified by the investment bank as the most valuable technology unicorn in Europe, while Sweden is second only to the UK in terms of the number of such companies with seven billion-dollar unicorns.

However, Europe lacks the kind of heavyweight, influential internet companies such as Facebook and Google - and doesn't look like it will ever develop one.

Manish Madhvani, a managing partner and co-founder of GP Bullhound, remained positive. "When you look at businesses in the $1bn to $3bn range, what we lack in quantity we more than make up for in terms of quality. All the data points towards a stable, maturing market that has avoided the excesses of the US in favour of sustainable growth. We are seeing a remarkable resilience in European technology markets," he told The Guardian.