Greater Manchester ranked among top European cities for international investment

Greater Manchester has been recognised among the top European cities for business in the International Investment Rankings of the Financial Times’ FDI European Cities and Regions of the Future 2023/24 report.

The Greater Manchester Local Business Board (GM LEP) was ranked 2nd overall of local enterprise partnerships, with top ten positions in the ranking on the city-region’s FDI Strategy (2nd), Economic Potential (4th), Connectivity (6th) and Business Friendliness (2nd). The LEP area was the only UK city-region outside the capital, which took the top spot, to make the ranking.

The report highlights Greater Manchester for its success in attracting 219 new foreign direct investment (FDI) projects, particularly in the software and IT sectors. Also noted was the city-region’s strong talent pool thanks to the presence of top universities that are home to a collected 29,000 STEM students that can feed into the city-region’s core sectors of digital, tech, advanced manufacturing, health and life science and net zero.

The City of Manchester itself at the centre of the city-region was also the top scoring UK city on the Europe-wide Large European City of the Future ranking, coming in 6th place behind Hamburg, Frankfurt, Krakow, Dusseldorf and Rotterdam.

As with the wider city-region, Manchester ranked in the top ten on Connectivity (3rd), Business Friendliness (3rd), FDI Strategy (5th) and Economic Potential (7th). The city was also praised for being the UK’s most liveable large city according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s latest Global Liveability Index.

Across the UK as a whole, Leeds was the only other city to rank in the top 10 in any category, being named 10th best for Business Friendliness. London also topped the leaderboard of Europe’s major cities for international investment, ahead of Amsterdam and Dublin which have been the biggest beneficiaries of post-Brexit movements in the financial sector. The region’s of South-East England (2nd), Scotland (7th) and East of England (9th) all made the top 10 in the Large European Regions of the Future 2023 ranking.

The full Financial Times’ FDI European Cities and Regions of the Future 2023/24 report can be downloaded from the FDi Intelligence website.