Helsinki ranked as most popular European city among new entrepreneurs

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Companies that set up shop in Helsinki in 2004 and 2005 are more satisfied with their home city than entrepreneurs in any other European city, according to a survey published in Brussels on Tuesday.
      Nearly 2,400 European entrepreneurs from 37 cities responded to the 2009 European Cities Entrepreneurship Ranking (ECER-Banque Populaire) study.
     
The ECER website describes the ranking as "a European tour of entrepreneurs' favourite cities, [providing] insights to help identify the most effective actions and approaches. The initiative aims to track not only entrepreneurs' satisfaction with public policies that promote business creation but also to better understand their expectations and where territories can make progress".
      In any event, Helsinki came out on top of the pile on its début in the survey. This is the second such ranking, but in 2007 Helsinki did not take part. Then the top three places went to Gothenburg, Stockholm, and Birmingham.
     
This time Helsinki was followed by Stockholm, Munich, Malmö, and Hamburg.
      British cities took a heavy tumble, in part because the economic crisis has hit the UK earlier and harder than elsewhere.
      Birmingham, for example, went from hero to zero extremely quickly: this time it was in 37th place, at the very bottom of the list, while London fell from 5th to 29th.
      Rome, Paris, and Athens - all very nice cities - also fared rather badly in the eyes of new entrepreneurs.


Links:
  ECER Results
  ECER Banque Populaire Ranking 2009

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