Microsoft, Pfizer and more: all new foreign investments in France
The Choose France event, taking place in Versailles, will bring investments of 15 billion euros to France. Between artificial intelligence, green industry and international finance, here are the projects of Amazon, Microsoft, Pfizer, Morgan Stanley and beyond
The technology companies Amazon and Microsoft, the pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and AstraZeneca and the investment bank Morgan Stanley are some of the companies ready to invest millions – or even billions – in France. Overall, the investments announced during the “Choose France” summit will amount to 15 billion euros, for a total of fifty-six projects.
WHAT IS CHOOSE FRANCE
Now in its seventh edition, "Choose France" is the event organized by Emmanuel Macron's government to stimulate the reindustrialization of France through the attraction of foreign investments and regulatory simplification, with the aim of transforming the country into the new economic hub- financial system of Europe after Brexit.
The summit takes place at the palace of Versailles, where Macron will meet one hundred and eighty executives of large companies. The investments announced this year exceed those of 2023, by 13 billion euros.
Of the 15 billion in investments expected for “Choose France” 2024, around 3 billion will be dedicated to digital and artificial intelligence projects: KDDI (Japanese) and Equinix (US), for example, will build new data centers.
WHAT AMAZON, PFIZER, MICROSOFT AND MORGAN STANLEY WILL DO IN FRANCE
Amazon will invest 1.2 billion in a series of projects to strengthen its logistics (for e-commerce) and computing (for artificial intelligence) capabilities, creating around three thousand jobs.
Pfizer will invest 500 million euros and AstraZeneca 365 million: the latter will focus on the Dunkirk region, in the north of the country, which wants to become a manufacturing hub for green steel , batteries and chemical materials .
Microsoft, on the other hand, will spend 4 billion to equip itself with infrastructure for cloud computing and artificial intelligence in France, also specifying that it wants to participate in the training of a million people and the support of 2,500 local startups. Last year, Microsoft invested 15 million euros in Mistral AI , a Parisian artificial intelligence startup that aims to rival the US OpenAI.
Morgan Stanley will expand its Paris campus, which will also house a global research center. In 2021 the bank had 150 employees in the French capital, which has now grown to almost four hundred.
PARIS, NEW BANKING HUB?
The Emirati bank First Abu Dhabi Bank and the Nigerian bank Zenith Bank will also open offices in Paris, which will serve to encourage investments by French companies in the Gulf region and in English-speaking countries in Africa. According to Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire (in the photo), Paris is becoming an international hub.
THE GREEN INDUSTRY
Among the investments presented by Le Maire, there are two that have the ambition of transforming France into a leading nation of the "decarbonized industry": the Swiss company KL1 will in fact spend 300 million on a nickel refining plant (a critical metal for electric vehicle batteries) in Blanquefort, while German startup Lilium will build a 400 million eVTOL (electric air taxi, simplifying) assembly plant in the south-west of the country.
On Sunday, interviewed by La Tribune , Industry Minister Roland Lescure spoke about the plans of the European consortium FertigHy, which plans to invest 1.3 billion euros in northern France by 2030 for the production of low-emission nitrogen fertilizers; while Solvay, a Belgian chemical company, will set up a dedicated rare earths unit at its La Rochelle plant for 100 million euros.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/investimenti-francia-choose-france-amazon-microsoft-morgan-stanley/ on Mon, 13 May 2024 11:47:39 +0000.