London
The Economic Times
Britain remained Europe's top destination for foreign direct investment in 2008, both in terms of the number of projects and the number of jobs created, a report by accountants Ernst & Young said on Thursday.
Some 3,718 new investments were announced in Europe in 2008, just 6 up from 2007, and Ernst & Young said this was likely to fall sharply this year as firms became more cautious in the face of a sharp recession across most of the continent. "The true picture of how the global recession has hit inward investment has yet to emerge," said Ernst & Young partner Marc Lhermitte, who wrote the report.
"Investment decisions for 2008 will have been made many months before the downturn hit, which explains why in 2008 Europe secured as many FDI projects as the year before. We expect 2009 to tell a very different story," he continued. Provisional data pointed to an 8 percent drop in the number of projects in the first three months of 2009 compared with a year earlier, the report said.
Britain received 18 percent of Europe's foreign direct investment in 2008, followed by France with 14 percent, Germany with 10 percent and Spain with 6 percent -- the same ranking as in 2007. The pattern was different in terms of the number of jobs created. Britain was top again, with 14 percent of the 148,333 new jobs, followed by Poland with 10 percent and France and Russia with 9 percent each.
Germany and Ireland saw big increases in the number of projects awarded in 2008, while the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Turkey suffered heavily as automotive and electronics investments were scaled back. IT outsourcing and business and financial services projects also suffered, while those linked to alternative energy were among the few that gained strongly.
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