Enthusiasm for entrepreneurship last year helped the UK to buck the trend for falls in the number of start-ups in the world's richest countries, an international survey has found.

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, the most comprehensive study of early-stage start-up activity, found the proportion of adultscreating businesses dropped from 12.4 per cent to 10 per cent in the US, 9.3 per cent to 7.1 per cent in Canada and 5.4 per cent to 4.4 per cent in France.