In the first week of September, fDi’s panel of judges pored over winning entries from round one of the competition to discover the best locations in northern, eastern, southern, western and central Europe. In total, 33 individual criteria were used to gauge which locations offer investors the best deal (see box overleaf). For the results, see page 16. The third and final round of fDi’s competition to find the European City and Region of the Future (which began in March) was judged in late September. Judges were asked to rank their top three locations out of the round two winners (that is, the best locations in northern, eastern, southern, western and central Europe). Barcelona and Scotland received by far the majority of nominations, making them the undisputed European City and European Region of the Future in fDi’s first annual competition.
The judges also rated locations in each of the eight main categories listed overleaf to find the best city and region in each category. The judges’ scores were then added to scores based on statistics provided by investment promotion agencies to find the winners. For the results, see page 22. The awards were presented at the Investors of the Future Forum 2004 in Hong Kong on November 18 and 19 (www.redhotlocations.com/iffhk).
