EuroWire January 2017

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Transatlantic cable
January 2017 33
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.”
Entrepreneurship
London is ‘the European centre of the
tech world,’ and City Hall
aims to hold on to the distinction
“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,” 18th 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 12th spot, while Bristol was 13th, Oxford 15th, and
Manchester 16th.
“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.
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.”
Competitiveness
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” (28th 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.