Salaries across a number of professions in Zurich, Geneva and Copenhagen are the highest in the world, while those in Nairobi, Manila and Mumbai are the lowest, according to a salary survey from Swiss bank UBS.

According to the Swiss bank’s tri-annual study: Prices and Earnings, A Comparison of Purchasing Power Around The Globe 2011, gross wages of fourteen different types of workers including bankers, in Northern and Central Europe, Australia and America, topped the ranks of the 73 global cities, while firms based in Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America paid their employees the worst salaries.

UBS compiled the list by calculating the wage, social insurance contribution and working hours data of 14 occupations worldwide including banking, taking into account exchange rates and inflation and factoring in productivity gains.

Given the UK government and media outcry over bankers’ pay which led to the implementation of the 50 per cent top earners tax rate earlier this year, you would be forgiven for imagining that London ranks as one of the highest paid cities in the world. Not so. Out of the 73 global cities on the list, London comes in at number 22, behind the likes of Helsinki, Amsterdam and Dublin, and narrowly beating Vienna.

UBS also ranked the 73 cities in order of how expensive they were to live in. Oslo came out top, followed by Zurich, Geneva, Copenhagen, Stockholm. At the bottom of the ranks were Mumbai, Manila, Delhi, Nairobi and Cairo. Analysts collected the data through measuring the cost of a weighted shopping basket of 122 goods geared to Western European consumer habits.

Analysts used the basket to compare purchasing power in the top 73 cities. On this scale, even though Zurich is ranked as the world’s second most expensive city after Oslo, the Swiss city tops the chart as where you can get most bang for your buck. Zurich is followed by Sydney, Luxembourg, Miami and Los Angeles. London ranked sixteenth. At the bottom of the scale were Jakarta, Nairobi, Manila, Mexico City and Mumbai.

To compile this data UBS measured the net hourly wage divided by the cost of the entire basket of 122 goods.