Sudip Kar-Gupta
PARIS (Reuters) – France said Morgan Stanley will open a new European office in Paris and two other companies announced a joint investment of 700 million euros ($753.8 million) as the country prepares to host a key annual foreign investment summit.
Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Sunday that Wall Street bank Morgan Stanley’s new office, dubbed its new “European campus”, will create 100 more jobs.
He added that German aviation firm Lilium would invest €400 million in the plant, while Swiss firm KL1 would invest €300 million in a nickel processing plant. Combined, these two investments could create more than 1,000 jobs.
Le Maire spoke as President Emmanuel Macron was set to host on Monday his annual “Choose France” event aimed at attracting big foreign businesses and investors.
The development comes as France, the eurozone’s second-largest economy, faces concerns about its budget deficit despite growing just 0.2 percent in the first quarter.
Le Maire said France and the European Union as a whole still needed to do more to combat competition from China and the United States.
He said that at a European Union meeting in Brussels this week he would reiterate the need for a capital markets union to facilitate investment in new areas of the economy such as renewable energy and artificial intelligence.
“New industries and new economies require huge amounts of capital. We urgently need to take concrete steps to create a capital markets union. I’ll be able to go to Brussels early this week to make the case again. capital markets union,” he told reporters.
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“Europe needs money. Otherwise, it will continue to lose productivity to the United States and China.”
Macron wants to boost Paris’s role as Europe’s leading business capital.
The closely watched Z/Yen survey of global financial centers, released in March, ranked Paris 14th behind Frankfurt, while New York was chosen as the world’s top financial center.
And last month, French oil company TotalEnergies (EPA:) said it was considering listing its primary stock exchange in New York.
Le Maire said that as part of the “Choose France” event, which attracted 13 billion euros of foreign investment last year, he would hold meetings on Monday with the heads of JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, among others.
“These roundtables will give us the opportunity to once again reach out to major financial investors so that they can continue to set up sites in Paris and finance the major industrial and economic projects that we are working on with the president,” Le Maire said. .
($1 = 0.9286 euros)