Bern shrugs off provincial image to attract business

Bern is looking across the Atlantic for new investors Keystone Archive

Bern is certainly holding its own in attracting new investment.

Bern’s Economic Development Agency has two main goals: to attract new investment from abroad and to help businesses already established to grow and create more jobs.

Like development agencies across the country, Bern’s agency has a limited budget and focuses on a few economic targets.

“We have chosen to concentrate on four main sectors,” says the agency’s head, Denis Grisel, “Telecommunications and Information Technology, the medical field, the micro and precision industry, and services such as holding companies and headquarters.”

Despite lying in the shadow of Zurich and Geneva, Grisel says ever more foreign companies are looking at the city as an alternative site.

He points to a recent survey that showed Bern topping a list of 217 other towns as the world’s most desirable city to live in.

Bern, he adds, is also not as expensive as other Swiss cities.

“We don’t attract sales and marketing teams because people need to fly a lot and be near the airport,” he says. “But for other back-up activities offered by a company headquarters, Bern is a good choice because we are a little cheaper and offer housing possibilities that no longer exist in Geneva or Zurich.”

As for financial incentives, Bern ranks in the top 5 or 6 cantons for low corporate taxes and offers tax holidays for new investors.

And with its university hospital and history of precision engineering, the canton offers a broad range of support for new investors.

Grisel points to the diversity of business in the canton. “We have the region of Biel oriented towards the watch and precision industries, we have Bern itself focussed on the telecommunications and IT sectors, and in the south there is Thun focussing on tourism.”

Grisel says such diversity is attractive and reels off the names of Swisscom, Ascom and Swatch as just some of the household names based in the canton.

Important as domestic employers are, the agency spends much of its time and money in trying to attract foreign investment.

It tends to concentrate its efforts on Germany, northern Italy and the United States. It has an agent in each country. In New York, the canton’s representative is Alan Parter who also has a colleague based in California.

On the agency’s internet site, Parter makes his pitch to potential American investors. “Americans have always wanted to know what’s in fashion,” he says, “what’s popular, what’s successful. Well, I’m here to tell you that Bern is hot.”

Parter then lists a stream of American companies such as E-Bay, Fritolay and
Ingram-Micro which have set up business in Bern.

Grisel says Parter is invaluable in providing a bridge to American businessmen and carrying out negotiations that can often drag on for months or even years.

Bern’s status as the country’s political heart seems neither help nor hindrance in attracting foreign investment. If anything, Grisel says it has a mildly positive effect as some investors like to be close to the embassies.

Among business circles, Zurich and Geneva will probably always remain more popular draws for foreign investment, but Bern appears to have been highly successful in carving out a niche for itself.

by Michael Hollingdale