Altogether 197 foreign-owned companies landed in the Helsinki region last year, marking a growth of 28% compared to the previous year’s total of 154 investment projects. The number includes both new establishments (99) and acquisitions (98). The Helsinki region’s share of all new foreign companies in Finland in 2015 was 74%.
The investment projects in the region were mostly related to the fields of business services (28%), ICT (21%) and health and life sciences (18%). Most foreign investments, 31% (61), came from Sweden and second most from the USA, 16% (31) respectively. There were also ten or more new companies from Denmark, UK, Estonia and Germany
– We focus on attracting knowledge-intensive foreign companies from the fields of ICT, smart & cleantech and health tech & life sciences. Helsinki’s strengths, according to our customers, are its highly educated workforce and the continuously growing and evolving start-up scene. These were, for example, some of the key reasons Zalando mentioned when choosing Helsinki as the location for their R&D unit that will employ up to 200 people, says Marja-Liisa Niinikoski, the CEO of Helsinki Business Hub.
The numbers are based on Invest in Finland’s statistics on foreign companies in Finland. Invest in Finland’s press release can be found from http://www.investinfinland.fi/articles/news/number-of-foreign-owned-companies-in-finland-grows-third-year-running/2-1359.
