Written by Sudip Kar Gupta
PARIS (Reuters) – France said Morgan Stanley will open a new European office in Paris, while two other firms announced a joint investment of 700 million euros ($753.8 million), as the country prepares to host an important annual foreign investment summit.
Wall Street bank Morgan Stanley's new office, dubbed its new “European campus,” will create 100 additional jobs, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Sunday.
He added that German airline Lilium will invest 400 million euros in a factory while Swiss-based KL1 will invest 300 million euros in a nickel refining site. Combined, these two investments could create more than 1,000 job opportunities.
Le Maire was speaking as President Emmanuel Macron was due to host the annual “Choose France” event on Monday aimed at attracting major foreign companies and investors.
This event comes at a time when France, the second largest economy in the euro zone, faces concerns about its budget deficit while its growth in the first quarter amounted to only 0.2 percent.
Le Maire said France and the European Union as a whole still had to do more to confront competition from China and the United States.
He said that he would stress during the European Union meeting in Brussels this week the need for a capital markets union to facilitate investments in new areas of the economy such as renewable energy and artificial intelligence.
“New industries and the new economy need huge amounts of capital. We urgently need to take concrete steps to start a capital markets union. I will be able to go to Brussels at the beginning of this week to raise this issue again. Capital markets union,” he told reporters.
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“Europe needs money. If not, it will continue to lose productivity to the United States and China.”
Macron wants to polish Paris's role as a major European commercial capital.
The closely watched Z/Yen survey of global financial centres, published in March, placed Paris in 14th place, behind Frankfurt, with New York named as the world's largest financial centre.
Last month, French oil major TotalEnergies (EPA:) said it was looking to list its initial shares on the New York stock market.
Le Maire said that as part of the “Choose France” event – which last year raised 13 billion euros in foreign investment – he would host meetings on Monday with the CEOs of JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, among others.
“These roundtables will give us an opportunity to connect again with major financial investors so that they can continue to establish 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)