Region retains top tier position for foreign investment
The region has been ranked 12th most popular global location for foreign direct investment (FDI) in the IBM 2019 Global Location Trends report, released today.
The report, which analyses corporate location selections, focuses on greenfield investments, expansions and co-locations for FDI.
In order to create a comparable population size against other similar global metro areas, IBM joined Manchester and Liverpool together as a region, hence the ranking is shown as Manchester-Liverpool.
The ranking, which has the metropolitan region second in the UK behind London and eighth in Europe, shows that Manchester has attracted a higher volume of projects than cities including Barcelona, Munich, Chicago, Melbourne and Hong Kong.
The UK remains in fifth place globally both by volume of jobs created and by value of those jobs created, behind only US, Mexico, India and China.
Looking specifically at specialist talents and resources, the UK is the fourth most successful location for R&D-based investments.
Tim Newns, chief executive of MIDAS, Greater Manchester’s inward investment agency, said: “For us to remain in the top tier of global cities for FDI for the second consecutive year firmly demonstrates the resilience of Greater Manchester and our continuing ability to attract global firms at the forefront of innovation.
“In the last year alone these have included Amazon, Hewlett Packard and Qiagen.”
He added: “Last year saw a record year for FDI into Greater Manchester in terms of jobs, with almost 3,200 jobs created from projects that MIDAS were involved in alone.
“This has very much bucked the wider trend we have seen across the UK, where job creation from FDI is down significantly.
“We are not complacent, however. Greater Manchester’s new Local Industrial Strategy sets out a very clear focus on areas of globally significant expertise and growth in health innovation and advanced materials, underpinned by enabling strengths and focus on digital and low carbon and we need to continue to communicate this powerfully to the market.”
Mr Newns said: “At the heart of the Northern Powerhouse, with strong global connectivity placing us at the centre of international trade, Manchester’s ‘career-ability’ and liveability continue to attract talented staff, creating jobs for our citizens and bringing sustained economic value to our region.
“Although we have performed well over the last 24 months, proving that Greater Manchester is internationally competitive, we still have a huge amount of work to do just to maintain this position, amongst strong international competition, in addition to growing our performance further and breaking in to the top 10.”
