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June 1, 2001

Europe’s 2000 Facilities Race: UK Remains No. 1 With Foreign Investors

L ONDON — The United Kingdom retained its title in 2000 as the continental leader in inward investment for new and expanded corporate facilities in Europe, according to data supplied by Ernst & Young’s European Investment Monitor.         The London-based EIM, a product of E&Y’s International Advisory Services’ database, reports that the […]

June 1, 2001

IDRC Abstracts

Abstracts of major presentations of the International Development Research Council (IDRC), the world’s preeminent corporate real estate association. “Building New Economy Towns,” Florida World Congress, Nov. 7, 2000:     If your company is still building class A office space in remote suburban locations that force workers to spend two hours a day trapped in traffic, […]

June 1, 2001

I n this 21st century world of virtual reality, virtual learning, virtual tourism — virtual everything, it’s entirely logical that site selection should have been transformed into a virtual activity. The hard-pressed corporate executive seeking new international facilities in far-flung overseas destinations need surely look no further than a mouse button and modem.     […]

June 1, 2001

CUED, AEDC Merge

W ASHINGTON — Can corporate real estate executives benefit from a stronger, more unified voice among economic development professionals? The answer, according to Council for Urban Economic Development (CUED) Chairman Kurt Chilcott, is “yes.”     In a letter to members of both CUED and the American Economic Development Council (AEDC) — two organizations of economic […]

June 1, 2001

Help Wanted: Labor Ready Finds Workers Where They Live

T ACOMA, Wash. — Labor Ready, the global temporary staffing firm that finds jobs for blue-collar workers where they live, may be a model for employers that need to fill work-force vacancies quickly.     With 770 offices in the United States, 35 in Canada and 20 in the United Kingdom, Labor Ready is the world’s […]

June 1, 2001

California Sweeps ‘Most Wired’ Rankings

San Jose, Calif., took first place in Yahoo! Internet Life magazine’s annual ranking of the most wired cities, knocking San Francisco to the No. 2 spot. D espite all of the hullabaloo about the energy scare and lack of labor, U.S. DataPort chose to locate a US$1.2 billion, 1,100-job Internet campus in Silicon Valley — […]

June 1, 2001

Surfing MIPIM: Euro Real Estate Web Sites All the Rage

C annes, FRANCE — Europe is sprouting a daisy chain of real estate Web sites likely to move much of the corporate real estate sector online continentwide in a bare few years. Typical of the fragmented linguistic patchwork of markets, each country is developing its own national approach. But from Viking “full-market access” to Gallic […]

June 1, 2001

U.S. Companies ‘Labor’ with Canadian Laws

I f they look alike, smell alike, sound alike, then they must be the same, right? Not exactly. Though Canada and the United States are similar in many ways, they are not identical, especially when it comes to labor laws. Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart found that out the hard way.         After entering […]

June 1, 2001

Mexico Has New Angles on NAFTA Trade Equation

“W e really haven’t started to see the entire impact from the NAFTA agreement,” says Jim Bruce, a consultant with Flur Daniel in Atlanta.         The NAFTA agreement is eight years old, but there are new components of the trade agreement equation that have business on all sides of the U.S. and […]

May 1, 2001

2000’s Top Deals: Chip Plants Deliver Big Bucks

I t’s no secret where the big bucks migrated in last year’s economic development race for large corporate facilities. The biggest deals, by far, involved the location of semiconductor manufacturing plants for the computer chip industry.         Just as processing speed and computing power continually increase with breakthroughs in wafer fabrication technology, […]

May 1, 2001

Breakthrough Deals Buck Economic Trend

A new plant or facility in a struggling community can have a dramatic effect. So can the location of a fresh industry in an area previously unidentified with that specific business. These breakthrough facilities impact their communities by bringing new jobs, new industry and often new opportunities.         With the slowdown in […]

May 1, 2001

Top 10 Economic Development Groups of 2000

Big decisions are rarely an easy task, especially when hundreds of millions of dollars and a company’s future may depend on them. Investments like Intel’s US$2 billion expansion in New Mexico or IBM’s $2.5 billion in East Fishkill, N.Y., aren’t decided with a blindfold, a dart and a map. No, instead many hours of research […]

May 1, 2001

Development Assistance Programs

E conomic development organizations worldwide are designing novel programs to enhance their appeal. From interactive web sites and work-force development plans to invent finance and tax incentives, local officials are creating new and innovative programs to lure business expansions and developments. In the slowing economy, these plans are developed to distinguish each individual community and […]

May 1, 2001

Rio Rancho: The New Company Town

R IO RANCHO, N.M. – Driving along the highway from Albuquerque, N.M., to suburban Rio Rancho to the north, the first thing one notices hovering over the town is the giant corporate edifice of the Intel Corp.         Dominating the city landscape like the majestic Sandia Mountains to the east, Intel’s sprawling, […]

May 1, 2001

Intel Outside – May 2001 Cover Story, Site Selection Magazine

RIO RANCHO, N.M. — S itting on a hillside perch overlooking this town just north of Albuquerque, the 5,500-employee Intel Corp. campus casts an imposing shadow over the area economy.         That shadow is about to grow even larger, as Intel (www.intel.com) embarks on a US$2 billion, 1,000-worker expansion of its semiconductor […]

May 1, 2001

IDRC Abstracts

Abstracts of major presentations of the International Development Research Council (IDRC), the world’s preeminent corporate real estate association. “Service Models for the New Economy,” Florida World Congress, Nov. 6, 2000:         Attendees in a theme program heard about how two corporations – ExxonMobil Corp. and Lucent Technologies – structure their corporate real […]

May 1, 2001

Call Centers: New Demands Drive Pan

N on-European firms seeking to establish a call center in Europe faced relatively few obstacles in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They opened individual centers in whichever countries they felt the need to be in. By today’s standards, the centers were generally low-tech, and the notion of networking multiple centers had yet to catch […]

May 1, 2001

Nortel Adapts to New Era of Uncertainty

A TLANTA — When Nortel Networks announced Feb. 15 that it would eliminate 10,000 jobs — or more than 10 percent of its global work force of 94,500 — it was further evidence that the economic slowdown had spread beyond the dot-coms.         The dreaded “L” word — layoffs — had reached […]

May 1, 2001

Tracking High

Editor’s Note: The following report was prepared by Jan Smit, senior consultant for International Location Advisory Services at Ernst & Young in London (jsmit@cc.ernsty.co.uk). G ermany is the economic powerhouse of Europe. It has a highly educated population, registers a high percentage of European patents and overall presents an interesting proposition to high tech-inward investors. […]

May 1, 2001

Sweden Tops Global IT Ranking; U.S. Slips to Fourth

N EW YORK — Sweden defended its ranking this year as the world’s dominant information economy, according to the 2001 International Data Corp. (IDC)/World Times Information Society Index (ISI).         For the second straight year, the ISI ranked Sweden No. 1 in the ability to access and absorb information and information technology. […]

May 1, 2001

Utilities Power Up Site Selection Efforts

T he California blackouts and the state’s continuing electricity crisis took center stage at the IOU-EDA Winter Forum, held on Feb. 21-23 in San Diego, and these problems bring to the surface an important question for site selectors: Will utilities in a deregulated market be capable of providing the service my company needs? Many technology […]

May 1, 2001

A s globalization accelerates, obliging firms to maximize operational flexibility, the U.S.-led sale-and-lease-back craze is spreading to Europe. Firms are rushing to minimize commitment to fixed assets and re-engineer corporate real estate portfolios to generate more funds for their core business.         Says Denis Kavanagh, international director corporate finance Jones Lang LaSalle, […]

May 1, 2001

New Premier Primes Quebec for Powerhouse Status

I s Bernard Landry, Quebec’s new Premier, controversial? Of course he is. A separatist? Definitely. But in his radio address heard around the world about Canada’s “uselessness” in terms of Quebec’s economic development, there was an underlying message that should be music to the ears of corporate investors.         Landry (right), the […]

May 1, 2001

Mexico’s Evolving Environment

W hat a difference a few years can make. Ten years ago, Mexico, by most accounts, was a third-world country. But since the opening of North American trade through NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), Mexico has become a fast-growing economy and a much-sought-after spot for corporate locations.         In fact, Mexico […]