The availability of highly skilled workers in the UK in general and in London, in particular, is a key driver of the recent growth of unicorn tech businesses – those that quickly reach investor valuations of $1 billion – according to a London-based accountant specialising in the sector.

Tariq Husain, CEO at Mayfair and Harrow-based Macalvins, said that the intellectual property these workers create is central to tech firms’ ability to generate the investor confidence needed to achieve such high valuations.

He commented after it was revealed that the UK produced 13 unicorns in the last year, meaning it now has a total of 72, putting it third in the world behind the US and China. More than one in three of the fastest growing tech businesses in Europe are now based in the UK.

Tariq said: “The value that investors collectively attribute to a business is always a question of trust in that business’s future financial performance and, ultimately, that they will see a return on their money within a reasonable timeframe.

“Investors are generally cautious and never just throw their money around. This means that they are highly confident about the future performance of the UK’s unicorns.

“Investors will not be basing their decisions on whim or on instinct. We can be sure that they will have looked at the business plans and assets of these companies in granular detail.

“Tech patents are likely to be key to investors’ decisions here because they give businesses monopolies on the technologies they develop for 20 years, enabling them to have a high level of confidence in their future performance.

“However, patents and the commercially valuable technologies they protect do not just appear out of thin air; they are created by highly skilled individuals. In my view, the availability of highly skilled individuals in London and the UK has led to the appearance of such a large number of unicorns, relative to those found in the rest of Europe.

“Moreover, the fact that there are so many successful tech businesses here means that people with the right skills and qualifications from around the world see London and the UK as good places to come and look for work on exciting projects.”

He added that these factors are compounded by the relative weakness of the pound making the UK more attractive to overseas investors than it has been for many years.