Singapore tops most attractive cities for investment

Singapore is the world’s most attractive city for investment, according to a report from JLL Real Views.

The report uses fDiIntelligence data to outline the cities that are most attractive to investors by the number of greenfield investment projects in 2014.

The following chart is taken from the report and highlights the positions of the ‘Big Six’ cities activities – London, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore. These are the six cities that have absorbed the biggest shares of financial and business services.

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Following Singapore in second place is London, while Shanghai completes the top three.

The list has a strong European and Asian feel, and is dominated by some of the world’s major financial centres. However, there is place for Bangalore in 8^th – reflecting global interest in India as an investment market, as highlighted by a recent EY report.

Singapore’s strength

While the US retains the most valuable brand, Singapore is judged to have the world’s strongest brand. According to the metrics used for the study, a country’s brand value is reliant upon GDP, i.e. revenues associated with the brand.

“Singapore’s small size means it will never be able to challenge for the top spot in brand value terms, because its brand simply cannot be applied extensively enough to generate the same economic uplift as ‘brand USA’ for example,”

the report says.

But in terms of its underlying country brand strength, Singapore does a lot with a little. It is also among the world’s most popular investment destinations, as are the countries that follow it on the Brand Strength index: Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates.

Finland, which ranks fourth, and New Zealand (fifth) are interesting outliers: while both hold appeal as FDI destinations, neither are in the top tier of FDI countries, suggesting they have not fully maximised their strong brands in their inward investment drives. 

Source: These are the most attractive cities for investment – Agenda – The World Economic Forum