Glasgow has been ranked as the top large city in Europe for its strategy to attract foreign direct investment.
Commenting on the research published today by fDi Intelligence, Glasgow City Council noted Glasgow had been “ranked…above Bilbao, Porto, Dusseldorf and Gothenburg for its approaches and ability to securing foreign investment”.
READ MORE: Ian McConnell: Torn-faced Prestwick Airport critics should lose their frowns
The local authority added that “Glasgow's partnerships between government, academia, businesses and the community and the hundreds of millions of pounds in funding secured over the past 18 months to advance the innovative sectors emerging across the city region” had been cited by fDi Intelligence, part of FT Group.
READ MORE: Ian McConnell: Don't throw stones Mr Ross. Can't you see you're in a glass house?
The council noted that, as well as the number-one spot for its foreign direct investment strategies in the European Cities and Regions of the Future 2024 research, Glasgow was also ranked fifth for connectivity and 10th for business friendliness.
READ MORE: Ian McConnell: Massive UK spanner in works for Kate Forbes' income tax plan
The “large cities” category includes those with a population in excess of 500,000 and a wider urban region of more than one million.
In the “major cities” category, Barcelona was top for FDI strategy.
Councillor Susan Aitken, leader of Glasgow City Council, said: "I'm absolutely delighted to see this recognition of the impact of the city government's economic policies, which have transformed Glasgow's approach to inward investment and put us in the top rank of European cities to attract high-quality jobs and generate growth all our citizens can share in.
"Recent years have seen the emergence of really significant sectors in tech, the green economy, the space industry, the creative economy, and advanced manufacturing - and these will all help to drive Glasgow's future growth and high-skilled jobs.”
She added: “Taken with our recent ranking as the world's 61st best city for global investment attractiveness, Glasgow can take real encouragement from how the world increasingly sees us."
The city council noted its Invest Glasgow team had helped attract overseas investment which had brought more than 6,000 jobs in the past five years, adding: “The team have helped to bring such investment from major companies such as Barclays, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Merck KGaA, Planet DDS and Spire Global to the city.”
It observed that a new investment strategy for Glasgow had been launched in autumn 2023, “responding to the changes in the investment landscape, impacted by Brexit and the pandemic”.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel