Tennessee's Southern hospitality is reaching around the globe, drawing the highest level of business investments from foreign companies of any state in the country.
A new study by the IBM Institute for Business Values ranked Tennessee No. 1 in the nation for foreign direct investment job commitments last year. Georgia ranked No. 3, behind only Tennessee and Texas.
The new Global Location Trends report cited 52 commitments from foreign-owned businesses that created 9,215 jobs and $1.68 billion in capital investment in Tennessee. Nearly 40 percent of all Tennessee's new jobs committed last year and nearly one-third of all capital investment committed in the state came from foreign direct investment.
Major foreign projects in 2013 included South Korean-owned Hankook Tire Co. (1,800 new jobs, $800 million investment), Japanese-owned Calsonic Kansei North America (1,200 new jobs, $109.6 capital investment) and Swiss-owned UBS (1,000 new jobs, $36.5 million capital investment).
"Tennessee is clearly an attractive place for foreign-owned companies to invest," Roel Spee, the global leader of IBM Plant Location International, said in a statement. "The state's first place ranking illustrates just how strong a competitor Tennessee is in the global marketplace and the momentum the state possesses in recruiting new foreign investment projects."
The Volunteer State is home to 864 foreign-based establishments that have invested over $30.1 billion in capital and employ more than 116,000 Tennesseans. The state's top 10 countries for investments include Japan, Germany, Canada, United Kingdom, South Korea, France, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden and Belgium.