Search the Internet          Tips  Sites: Finance, Investment

London set to be Europe's Bangalore

Sanjay Suri
India Abroad Correspondent in London

London is on course to becoming the Bangalore of Europe as the most favoured city for locating e-business.

London emerges as a hot favourite in a survey among e-business firms in Europe.

London is two-and-a-half times more favoured than its nearest contender Paris, the survey shows. Dublin and Amsterdam follow. The least favoured city was Warsaw.

The survey, by international property consultants Healey & Baker, puts London in first place on 11 out of 14 counts. The list of 14 indicates what firms have in mind when they pick a city to locate their business.

The areas where London scored above others are reliable electricity supply, fibre capacity and bandwidth, staffing skills, access to markets, international transport links, English spoken, reliable local transport facilities, Web designing skills, flexible employment conditions, proximity to academic and research centres, and its image of 'coolness'.

On many of these counts, London scored more than twice as much as the second best in the survey encompassing 201 specialist e-business firms spanning nine nations.

The majority of the firms surveyed predicted that London will become the leading centre in Europe for e-logistics, e-finance, e-design and software.

Some of the latest firms to have located in London are the US-based travel buying system Priceline Europe, an Australian business-to-business e-solutions provider NetdotCom, German e-commerce consultancy SinnerSchrader, and American network service providers Greenwich Technology Partners.

London has set up a service called London First to help e-companies from around the world locate in London.

Michael Charlton, managing director of London First says: "International investors, particularly e-business companies, want to base their operations here because London has the people, the infrastructure, communications facilities, power supply, and access to international markets which will allow their businesses the best possible chance to succeed and grow on a global level."

London is making extensive efforts to attract investment from e-companies. London First has been offering free expert consultancy to foreign companies looking to locate in London.

"We have directly assisted more than 500 companies from 32 countries around the world to locate or expand in the capital," Anna Barlow from London First said.

The government and the private firms have come together to pay for the work London First is doing to attract investment.

The Department of Trade and Industry, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office are paying towards this exercise to attract investors. So are several private companies located in London such as British Airways, British Telecom, and consultancies like Ernst & Young and KPMS.

Money

Business News

Tell us what you think of this report