Invest in Lombardy: the Annual Report is out

After the Invest in Lombardy Days, the ten-day event about the attraction of foreign investments traditionally held yearly in Milan, it is time to assess and have a look at a year of activities.

The program of events, together with handouts and presentations, is published on our blog, we will focus now on the general overview of Lombardy, today, as a destination for foreign investments.

The picture contained in the Annual Report, recently released by Invest in Lombardy, is impressive and effective in describing why Lombardy can be defined as “the economic heart of Italy”, being a best practice in every field pertaining internationalization, from export (27.9% of the whole Italian export) to the number of subsidiaries of Italian companies abroad (34% of the total). These figures can be better understood considering that Lombardy accounts for 16.5% of the Italian population and for 18.35% of the Italian enterprises.

The international attitude is confirmed by 48.6% of all the Italian companies integrated in international groups being based in Lombardy.

Going to FDIs, Lombardy is the main destination in Italy: in 2014 62 greenfield projects were implemented in the region (85% in Milan). The data provided by fDi Markets and fDi Benchmark (from Financial Times ltd) show a countertrend for Lombardy, where in 2014 we had an increase in the number of FDI projects (+14%) compared with the general tendency (-1.7%).

What is the role of Invest in Lombardy in contributing to the process of investment attraction and supporting foreign companies interested in investing in Lombardy?

Every 17 minutes a company gets in touch with Invest in Lombardy from abroad, our staff calls 24 contacts a day and organizes a road show monthly. Invest in Lombardy met more that 1,000 companies during road shows in the last 12 months and provides assistance to 2 potential investors every day, supplying in average 18 hours of free support to a company and closing 5 deals every 60 days.

Maybe the main figure and the best metric emerging from the Annual Report is the ROI of Invest in Lombardy: each single euro invested in our project generated 112 € in FDIs.

And maybe the best indicator to summarize the Annual Report and the results of years of activity is the role acknowledged to Lombardy by fDI Benchmark: the region is called one of the four economic European engines and best destination among Southern Europe regions.