It’s been a solid start to the week for France.
Officials announced today that the country has bagged €15 billion ($16.2 billion) in investments from multinational companies ranging from tech to pharmaceuticals, helping bolster its business landscape.
Microsoft, Amazon, Morgan Stanley, Sanofi and more are planning to pump investments into their French businesses as part of President Emmanuel Macron’s “Choose France” summit on Monday.
This is a serious amount to announce in one day, even for a country that typically receives substantial foreign direct investment (FDI), like France. To put it in perspective, in 2022, which was a particularly strong year, the country received $36.4 billion FDI inflow in 2022, according to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
The Choose France event, now in its seventh year, positions France as a leading hub for global business.
This year, in one of its most significant FDI announcements, a total of 56 projects were added.
Microsoft, for instance, has committed €4 billion ($4.3 billion) to build its cloud and AI capabilities to train a million people and help 2,500 startups grow over the next three years. Fellow tech giant Amazon also unveiled new investments worth $1.3 billion.
French pharma company Sanofi has plowed €1 billion ($1 billion) into the country to expand drug production. Its peers Pfizer and AstraZeneca also said they’d invest close to $1 billion in France.
“This new investment will create more than 500 jobs and significantly strengthen France’s ability to control the production of essential medicines from start to finish, for the present day and into the future,” Sanofi said in a statement Monday.
Major banks like Morgan Stanley and First Abu Dhabi Bank are among the others that have investments lined up.
How does French FDI compare with the rest of Europe?
France typically receives among the highest inward FDI in Europe, with the second-highest total in 2022, behind Sweden, according to UNCTAD.
However, its total stock of foreign investments still trails Britain’s: France’s inward FDI stock was $897 billion that year, equal to just under one-third of its GDP, while the U.K. clocked $2.7 trillion.
Germany’s inward FDI stock was just over $1 trillion, representing a smaller share of its economy than France or the U.K.
The FDI flurry announced today comes as France doubles down on improving its attractiveness for business.
Famous for its wine and gastronomy, the country has a diversified economy with strengths including pharmaceuticals, finance, aerospace, and automotive manufacturing. Paris has more Fortune Global 500 company headquarters than rival London, and numerous financial institutions have transferred operations there from the U.K. capital since Britain’s 2016 vote to leave the EU.
While France still faces economic challenges like high labor costs and a relatively tight tax regime, these clearly haven’t deterred investors. With billions in the pipeline for investment and thousands of jobs set to be created across industries, global businesses are voting with their wallets.
