EuroWire January 2017

Transatlantic cable

Ms Dennys’s assertion that “clamping down further on skilled immigration is not the answer” receives a receptive hearing in City Hall. Rajesh Agrawal, London’s deputy mayor for business, told Ms Smith that the city’s growing success as a tech hub is built upon its world-class pool of talent. Thus, he said, it is “more important than ever that companies in London and across Britain have access to the global talent they need to grow and create jobs and prosperity.” Mr Agrawal also said that his boss, Mayor Sadiq Khan, would continue to make the case to government to ensure a exible approach to bringing in global talent. † There is support for the access-to-talent initiative in the London business/technical community. Gerard Grech, the CEO of Tech City UK, said that the management consultancy is working closely with government to make sure it understands that companies and entrepreneurs need to be able to continue recruiting highly skilled sta from around the world. Mr Grech pointed to Google’s recent announcement that it was going ahead with its $1.2 billion London headquarters. He told Ms Smith, “As Google has shown with its renewed commitment to King’s Cross, with plans to create 3,000 more jobs here, London remains the European centre of the tech world and we intend to work hard to keep it that way.” Once again, the world’s three most competitive economies are Switzerland, Singapore and the United States of America Another London-based journalist, Lianna Brinded, the nance editor of Business Insider , also found a home-team advantage in recent news: the UK moved up three places to be named the seventh most competitive economy in the world last year. The certifying authority is the World Economic Forum (WEF), which publishes an annual Global Competitiveness Report on the state of the world’s economies. The 2016–2017 edition of this comprehensive assessment was published in late autumn. The WEF looks at data on areas as varied as the soundness of banks to the sophistication of businesses in each country, then uses the data to compile a picture of the individual economies. Ranking is according to the “12 pillars of competitiveness,” including macro-economic environment, infrastructure, health and primary education, and labour market e ciency. Here, lightly edited, are Ms Brinded’s capsule summaries of the economies topping the WEF list, from her article “The 31 Most Competitive Countries in the World” (28 th September): 1 (with a WEF ranking of 5.81) Switzerland . Switzerland retained its position and even improved on its scores in previous years. The country not only makes it into the top ten of eleven of the “pillars” – it leads in four of them: labour market e ciency, business sophistication, innovation, and technological readiness. Competitiveness

How Washington might a ord such a massive investment is, of course, not yet known. But Merrill Lynch economists consulted by the Monitor pointed out that Mr Trump has proposed getting American companies to bring home the $2.5 trillion in pro ts they have stashed overseas – using lower taxes as a sweetener. (At 35 per cent, the USA has the world’s highest corporate tax rate.) If the persuasion should succeed, this could both help oat the infrastructure project and o set the income losses stemming from lower taxes. † President Barack Obama also sought to introduce an infrastructure spending programme to boost the economy, but was thwarted by a Republican Congress. Mr Trump, who inherits another Republican Congress, has a better shot – but his advantage is not absolute. Having essentially run his own remarkably bitter and acrimonious campaign for the presidency, he won as the result of a populist insurgency and owes nothing to the Republican establishment. Many in its ranks take a jaundiced view of the new chief executive, and viceversa. Even so, as noted by Mr Klein of the Brookings Institution, in addition to his new bully pulpit Mr Trump comes into o ce with the freedom and exibility “to break the logjam over simple, common sense solutions such as investing in infrastructure.” “According to innovation foundation Nesta and the European Digital Forum’s European Digital City Index, the capital is still the best city in Europe for start-ups, thanks to its access to capital, buzzing entrepreneurial culture, and access to a skilled workforce.” The capital in question is London; and Rebecca Smith, who covers transport and infrastructure for the London-based news site City AM , had more to report about the leadership position it retained for a second straight year. London came ahead of second-place Stockholm, third-place Amsterdam, and fourth-place Helsinki, with Paris rounding out the top ve. In both start-ups and scale-ups, London also “came top” in ten core metrics, including mentoring and business environment. (“London’s Still the Number One City in Europe for Digital Start-ups,” 18 th November) The ranking of 60 European cities nds nine in the UK, with six of these in the top 20. Ready access to mentoring earned Cambridge the 12 th spot, while Bristol was 13 th , Oxford 15 th , and Manchester 16 th . “This is welcome news and, once again, highlights the global importance of London’s diverse tech community,” Romilly Dennys, executive director of the Coalition for a Digital Economy (Coadec), a UK-wide community of tech startups, told City AM . She said also that the recognition accorded London demonstrates the need to encourage tech-driven growth across every city and region of the UK, with access to talent – both global and domestic – the chief concern. Entrepreneurship London is ‘the European centre of the tech world,’ and City Hall aims to hold on to the distinction

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January 2017