Republic is ninth largest world investor in US, report shows

Ireland is now the ninth largest source of foreign direct investment in the US, according to a report on the transatlantic economy, writes Conor O'Cleryin New York.

The report by Joseph Quinlan, Fellow of the Centre for Transatlantic relations at Johns Hopkins University, says the Republic is the ninth largest world investor in the US, ahead of major economies such as Italy and Spain, and is the sixth largest EU investor.

The top 10 investors in the US are listed as the UK (16.5 per cent), Japan (12 per cent), Netherlands (12 per cent), Germany (11.6 per cent), France (11.1 per cent), Switzerland, (9.5 per cent), Canada (8.2 per cent) Belgium/Luxembourg (4.2 per cent), Ireland (2.1 per cent) and Sweden (1.8 per cent).

The total of Irish investment in the US reached $18.5 billion (€16 billion) in 2001, the latest year for which statistics are available. This represents an explosion in Irish business expansion into the US in the last decade.

It is more than double the value of Irish investment in the US in 1998 ($8.4 billion) and almost four times the total in 1996 ($4.8 billion).

Ten years previously in 1991, it amounted to barely $2 billion.

The rise came from major transatlantic deals by Irish firms, especially those which surged in market value before the US recession and the collapse of the tech and internet bubble.

Elan, for example, made one of the 50 biggest acquisitions in the US in 2000 when it took over Dura Pharmaceuticals for $1.7 billion.

In his report Mr Quinlan says globalisation is happening faster and reaching deeper between Europe and America than between any other two continents.

Europe's investment stake in the US "grew to a whopping $835 billion in 2000, which is nearly one quarter larger than America's stake in Europe".

He said this meant "European firms have never been as exposed to the US economy as in the first decade of the 21st century".

In the 1990s nearly three-quarters of all foreign investment in the US came from Europe, and by 2000 European firms held some $3.3 trillion in US assets. There is more European investment in Texas alone than all US investment in Japan.

Foreign Direct Investment inflows to the US from Europe soared to an annual average of nearly $110 billion in the second half of the 1990s "marking one of the most explosive periods of inward foreign investment in US history".

European affiliates in total employed some 4.4 million Americans in 2000, some 6.5 per cent more than US firms in Europe.

While US investment is providing 80,000 jobs in Ireland, Irish investment in the US is responsible for almost the same number of jobs, according to the Tánaiste, Ms Harney, in a speech at Harvard University in April.