Derbyshire’s investment strategy named one of best in Europe by FT

Derbyshire’s strategy for attracting overseas investment to the county has been named as one of the best in Europe in rankings compiled by the Financial Times.

Part of Marketing Derby’s Invest in Derbyshire service involves attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) to the county.

And in the prestigious Financial Times’ fDi European Cities and Regions of the Future 2022/23 rankings, Derbyshire has been placed fifth within the top 10 Small Regions for FDI Strategy category, which recognises the regions who have devised the strongest strategy for attracting investment.

Derbyshire is ranked alongside other regions in countries across Europe, including Ireland, Switzerland, Finland, Croatia, Spain, Norway, Austria and Serbia – and is the only UK region to feature in the top 10.

John Forkin, managing director of Marketing Derby, said: “This is really good news as we have put a lot of effort into developing the successful Marketing Derby inward investment service into the county.

“We have worked very closely with our partners at Derbyshire County Council, Derbyshire Enterprise Partnership and Destination Chesterfield in doing this.”

Derby and Derbyshire also enjoyed success in a category which recognised the efforts of Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs).

The D2N2 LEP (Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire) was ranked seventh in the Connectivity category.

fDi Intelligence is a service from the Financial Times and is the largest Foreign Direct Investment centre of excellence globally.

The rankings are one of the industry’s most prominent benchmarks of FDI competitiveness.

For this year’s rankings, fDi’s research team assessed 356 European cities and 148 European regions.

Both awards were presented at a ceremony held yesterday at MIPIM, the global property fair, which is taking place this week in Cannes, in the south of France.