Drive to get MNC HQs starts to pay off

Mazda Motor (China) Co Ltd, Yazaki (China) Investment Co, Intel (China) Co Ltd and Starbucks (China) Co Ltd are among the 25 multinationals' regional headquarters granted certificates by the municipal government this week.

It was the 12th such batch in the city to receive government certificates since Shanghai stepped up its efforts years ago to persuade more multinationals to make Shanghai their home.

By the end of June, multinationals had set up 174 regional headquarters and 156 investment companies in the city, according to statistics from the Shanghai Municipal Economic Relations and Trade Commission (SMERT).

Of the regional headquarters, 56 were set up by Fortune 500 companies.

SMERT Director Zhou Bo said on Monday that more multinational companies have started to move their sales, fund management, research and development, services, management and other core functions to Shanghai.

SMERT cited the examples of Unilever and Philips. The two companies have integrated their scattered R&D operations in China in their Shanghai headquarters.

Zhou described the setting up of more regional headquarters by multinationals in Shanghai as an indication of the city's high-quality work in luring foreign investment.

In the first half of this year, Shanghai approved 1,953 foreign-funded projects, with a contractual foreign capital of $6.79 billion, down 6.04 percent over the same period last year. But the actual foreign investment materialized stood at $4.30 billion, up 7.3 percent over the same period a year ago.

(China Daily 07/25/2007 page15)