While official data shows a recovery in US consumers’ confidence, international investors have been less enthusiastic about its financial centres. The ranking of North American hubs by inward foreign direct investment (FDI) is largely dominated by US cities – Toronto is the only Canadian centre to appear in the latest table. But rather than rising with the generally more optimistic view on the US, international capital expenditure in the region’s leading hubs has diminished slightly over the past year.
New York, the US’s most attractive centre, has gathered a total of $289.6m in the 12 months to the end of September, against $328.6m during the previous period, according to estimates by data provider fDi Intelligence. Furthermore, the country’s top three hubs received a total of $688.8m against the previous $720.2m. Toronto’s $95.5m scored fifth place in the latest ranking, while this figure would not have made the cut a year earlier.
A decline was also felt in the outward FDI list, where US centres generated less investment. Toronto, on the other hand, poured a total of $1.02bn into other hubs compared with the previous period’s $872.1m.
New York leads the outflows ranking too, with $1.78bn. While FDI into New York’s financial centre had an average value of just over $11m, and a limited variance from the middle figure, outflows from the city had an average value twice as big and much higher peaks than in the inflows table.
The largest spender was New York-based stock exchange Nasdaq, which invested $414.4m to create two data centres in Ontario, a new support centre in Vilnius, Lithuania, and relocated its disaster recovery centre to Chicago. The rankings include interstate investments too.
