Plant Location International (PLI), the global consulting practice for corporate location and inward investment services, has become part of IBM Global Services, following the acquisition of PwC Consulting by IBM.

Transcom Worldwide, the customer relationship manager specialist, has opened its third call centre in Italy. The call centre will create approximately 200 jobs in the town of Lecce, southern Italy.

The East Midlands Development Agency (Emda) has become the first UK-based regional development agency to target investors in India. The appointment of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India in Mumbai to carry out investment promotion is part of the agency’s plan to bring new jobs and industries to the region from lucrative overseas markets.

The battle to attract lucrative contact centre investments in the Asia Pacific region continues.

FDI is bypassing Hong Kong and going direct to mainland China, the Financial Secretary of Hong Kong, Antony Leung has warned.

With the Chinese eco-nomy growing at 7% a year and Hong Kong at only 1.7%, and with China now considered a more attractive destination than the US by many companies, this trend is unsurprising.

The largest FDI-related conference in South East Asia took place in Xiamen, China at the beginning of September.

According to Donald Linn, director of the liaison division for the China International Fair for Investment and Trade: “The investment fair is drawing more and more attention, for it serves as a platform for bilateral, multifunctional international investment and economic co-operation.”

My comments in the preceding issue of fDI focused on the decline of worldwide FDI flows by about one half in 2001. This decline is set to continue in 2002 – the United Nations Council for Trade and Development (Unctad) predicts a further drop of 27% overall, 23% in developing countries and 1% in Central and Eastern Europe.

The likelihood of decision makers from the world’s largest firms investing abroad has declined for the first time since the Asian crisis. This is according to the management consultants AT Kearney’s FDI Confidence Index, an annual survey of CEOs, CFOs and other executives of 1,000 global firms.

FDI inflows into Lithuania reached €460m in the first part of 2002. According to a recent review by the Bank of Finland’s Institute for Economies in Transition (BOFIT), this is an almost 50% rise in comparison to 2001.

When a company is discovered bribing a government, it is usually only the civil servants involved that are punished. In an unprecedented case, the Canadian engineering company Acres International has suffered the humiliation of being the first multinational to be fined for bribing its way into a World Bank-funded dam project in the small mountain kingdom of Lesotho in southern Africa.

Just as the international economy is embracing modernity on several fronts – the rise in trade and FDI flows over the past decade, for example – along comes a blow to send it back to the Dark Ages.

With trade issues high on the agenda from South America to the European Union, it appears that Dr Supachai Panitchpakdi has his work cut out for him as the new director general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

Serbia’s transition is moving at a dramatic pace and one of the key reformers is central bank governor Mladjan Dinkic, though he is not without his critics.

His vision for FDI is that it should start flowing at the rate of $1bn a year from 2003 onwards and could rise to as much as $2.5bn.

Brazil’s three southern states claim to offer a higher quality of life than the better-known Săo Paulo and are confident that they will become increasingly attractive to foreign investors, writes Hugh O'Shaughnessy.

Even modest policy reforms have triggered significant improvements in African agribusiness. The long-term potential is considerable, writes Paul Melly.

In spite of the initial problems involved in dealing with the Greek authorities, John Hogg Technical Solutions considers its first foray into a foreign market a success. The Manchester-based private company is a leading manufacturer of dyes and markers for the international petroleum industry. The company also makes specialised products for a variety of applications, including smoke dyes and anti-theft products.

The numbers are enough to make most investment funds salivate. Since Russian snack producer Bridgetown set up only months after the Russian 1998 financial crisis, sales have grown 50-fold and show no signs of slowing down. The company has turned a deaf ear, for the moment, to multinational strategic investors beating at the door as it moves across the border, certain it can repeat its dizzying growth in the untouched Ukrainian market.

It looked like it would be a cinch when Roy Brown, chief executive of the Canadian firm Knowaste, first showed up in Europe with a plan to create a new market recycling incontinence and diaper products. It could not compete in North America where traditional costs of landfill disposal ran at $30-$40 a ton, well below Knowaste’s cost threshold. But in Europe, where its own costs were two-thirds the $100 a ton it cost to incinerate waste, the company saw its opportunity. It would be easy, Mr Brown and his partners figured, to convince Europeans to recycle incontinence and diaper products because it was better for the environment. That was the first miscalculation.

MRV Engenharia, a construction company based in Belo Horizonte in Brazil, is making its first expansion outside of its home country.

Low taxation, a high quality of life and an almost eerie sense of orderliness means more international executives chose to locate in Switzerland than in any other country. Courtney Fingar writes

War, terrorist attacks, financial and political crises need not deter FDI. Many countries and their investors have battled against the odds to keep investment flowing or to recover quickly from devastation.

A rule change to allow greater foreign ownership to help rescue India’s ailing private banks is good news for FDI, reports
Kala Rao from Mumbai

Slovakia is set to join the EU in 2004, officially recognising its increased GDP, controlled inflation and growth in FDI levels.

Slovakia has recently “made the grade” and will be accepted into the European Union at the beginning of 2004 along with the other accession countries. Often considered the poor cousin of the Czech Republic, it is coming into its own as an investment destination. The GDP growth rate is higher at 3.4% (first half 2002) than another neighbour, Hungary, and inflation has been pushed down to 3% from 7% last year. There has been impressive growth in FDI levels due to an improved business environment. Inflows amounted to $2.1bn in 2000 from $354m in 1999.

Flush with success, Vicente Fox, Mexico's president, is turning to tax exemption and export simplification measures to attract further foreign investment after last year’s record $25bn haul.
Karina Robinson interviews him

As the former head of Latin America for beverages giant Coca-Cola, President Vicente Fox is more than aware of the importance of foreign direct investment. That is part of the reason for his trip to Europe this month, where he will be telling his hosts about his country’s advantages.

US high-tech companies may be more risk averse when it comes to overseas investment, but FDI in Europe is holding up while Asia in particular is enjoying a mini boom.
Ashleigh Lezard explains.

Every year at the Hewlett-Packard Company (HP) headquarters near Helsinki, Finland, wireless technology developers gather at a mobile e-services camp. Peter Vesterbacka, a Finn with a Finnish passion for mobile communications, describes with great enthusiasm how for three days and three nights non-stop, developers from companies from all over the world listen to industry professionals, learn from each other and invent new and better ways to make life easier through mobile telecommunications.