Montréal ranked no. 2 in the world for its foreign direct investment strategy

Montréal International (MI) is proud to have earned this recognition highlighting the performance and relevance of the FDI strategy it adopted a few years ago. By targeting priority regions and strategic sectors, MI’s business prospecting efforts have resulted in outstanding results in 2020, despite the pandemic. As there was a 35% drop in the value of investment projects across the globe in 2020, compared to 2019, MI was able to reinvent itself.  

By leveraging this strategy, MI supported a record number of 90 foreign investment projects in 2020, for a total value of $2.2 billion, which is only a 15% decrease compared to the previous year. These projects were in a wide variety of sectors in which Greater Montréal excels, such as IT services, software development, AI, transportation logistics, life sciences and health technologies. 

fDi Magazine also recognized Montréal as the best place in the world to invest in the digital and multimedia sectors. It was also impressed by MI’s web portals, highlighting everything Greater Montréal has to offer through impactful videos, statistics on its talent pool, interactive tools, webinars, etc. 

To expand Greater Montreal’s talent pool, MI is ramping up promotion and prospecting initiatives aimed at skilled workers and international students, particularly by rolling out its new recruitment web portal, Talent Montréal. 

This award follows two top prizes MI earned in 2020 when it was officially recognized as the best economic development agency in the world by the International Economic Development Council (IEDC) and the top investment promotion agency by fDi Intelligence Awards, a Financial Times division.  

About the fDi Magazine rankings

The Global Cities of the Future 2021/2022 ranking is part of fDi Magazine’s Cities of the Future series designed to identify the most promising destinations around the world for future inward investment. Data was collected for 129 locations and analyzed for the study under five categories: Economic Potential, Human Capital and Lifestyle, Business Friendliness, Cost Effectiveness and Connectivity. Furthermore, a sixth category, i.e., FDI Strategy, was evaluated for 44 submissions.  

For more details about the ranking, refer to fDi Magazine.