More european entrepreneurs in the Boston area

(Boston Business Journal, November 22, 2013)

While the big European companies with a presence in Boston - Swiss-owned Novartis, Spanish-owned Santander Bank, French-owned Genzyme Corp. just to name a few - are well known, there's an increasing number of smaller, unfamiliar names: Germany wants to profit from Boston's biotech boom with a German Life Science Accelerator that opened in Cambridge earlier this year, a similar Czech venture opened recently in downtown Boston. A growing number of European companies now see Boston as the place to jump-start their innovations. Boston's workforce, capital and the geographical convenience are increasingly luring startups over the pond. As of 2012, an estimated 190'000 employees in Massachusetts were working at foreign firms, a gain of 6000 jobs or 3% since 2008. The vast majority is employed by British, Dutch, French, German and Swiss companies.