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IBM Global Location Trends

10-1-2008
IBM's Global Location Trends report- October 2008 - was recently released. The report is prepared by Plant Location International (PLI), a strategy consulting service by IBM Global Business Services for advising companies with their global location strategies, and helping economic development organizations to improve their strategies to attract such companies.
Some of the key findings from this year's report are:
• Globally, an estimated 1.2 million jobs will be created by 10,200 foreign (greenfield) investment projects announced in 2007. This is a reduction of some 20% from 2006 (an all time record year), but remains a high performance equal to the number of jobs announced in 2005.
• The widening of global investment is a structural trend: despite an overall decrease in total investment, companies extend their search for markets, talents, and cost efficiency to new corners of the world.
• New emerging markets continue to appear on companies' radar screens; Latin America & Africa in particular are increasing their share of global investment
• Different strategic location drivers (market, talents, cost efficiency) result in a variety of location choices by sector and business function; targeted economic development strategies are indeed effective in responding to these different location strategies.
• Renewable energy sector promises to be an important new job creator in many different areas globally.
• Indian and Chinese companies are increasingly creating jobs in key global markets, and becoming important target groups for inward investment attraction.
• Competition for skills, markets and cost efficiencies forces companies to be increasingly innovative in where they locate their activities and how they structure their global footprint.

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