(24 February 2014) – In a study of the most promising investment locations in Europe, fDi Magazine has crowned London and North Rhine-Westfalia in Germany winners of the ‘European City and Region of the Future’ titles.
Data was collected for 468 locations, both cities and regions, in six catego¬ries: Economic Potential, Human Capital and Life¬style, Cost Effectiveness, Infrastructure and Busi¬ness Friendliness, and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Strategy.
London ranked first place in the overall cities ranking, followed by Helsinki and Eindhoven. Helsinki emerged as a new entry in the Top 25 European cities. There was a notable change in the overall cities ranking with new entries for Dutch cities – Eindhoven, Rotterdam and Utrecht ranked 3rd, 14th and 18th, respectively. There were also new entries for French and UK cities in the ranking, with Lyon ranking 15th, Grenoble 17th and Birmingham 19th.
For ‘European Regions of the Future’, North Rhine-Westfalia ranked first, rising six places from the previous ranking in 2012/13. It is followed by Scotland and Copenhagen.
Regionally, the Cost Effectiveness category was predominantly made up of eastern European regions. Macedonia’s Ohrid-Struga ranked first, while Serbian regions claimed three of the overall Top 10 European places. In addition, Spanish regions Andalucia and Catalonia ranked eighth and 10th of all large European regions, respectively.
In the year to November 2013, fDi Markets recorded 3652 greenfield FDI projects (excluding retail) in Europe. In the same period, Europe received just over a third of global FDI, the largest of any world region. Of Europe’s FDI projects, 665 investments (18.2%) were made in the software and IT sector, compared with 14.4% in Asia. Software publishing was Europe’s largest subsector, accounting for more than half of all investment in software and IT.