Investment Aftercare Explained: A Guide for FDI Practitioners and Policymakers on How to Grow and Retain Investors

This book is the first to systematically map the last step of the foreign investor’s journey, usually referred to as post-investment, aftercare or business retention and expansion. It provides a wide range of approaches and strategies for host economies to better retain foreign investors, encourage follow-on expansions and achieve greater local economic embeddedness through a multi-stakeholder dialogue, leading to improvement of the overall business climate.

Global foreign direct investments reached US$1.5 trillion in 2019, but this figure reduced by over 42% in 2020, due to the pandemic. Against this backdrop, retaining established investors became even more important. Numerous organisations all over the world are dedicated to attracting foreign companies to invest in their markets. Facilitating this effort is a dynamic and competitive industry that involves international organisations supporting capacity building, think tanks, academia and consultants. However, once foreign companies decide to invest, a critical question arises: how can host economies grow and retain these foreign investments? Many host governments could do much better, as there is very little post-investment support for these foreign companies to help them grow their businesses throughout different stages of investment, business and economic cycles. This is where aftercare comes in. In this book, the authors include diverse examples from around the world to demonstrate aftercare best practices in action.

This book is an essential read for all public administration staff related to FDI attraction and promotion, practitioners in the private sector and FDI consultants. It will also be of great interest to multilateral organisations seeking to organise seminars and training courses for capacity building. The book will also benefit researchers, academics and postgraduate students of international relations, foreign trade and internationalisation.

For further information, see www.aftercareexplained.com.

Carolina Arriagada Peters is one of the very first international consultants specialised in Aftercare and Post-Investment. She advises governments on how to maximise long-term foreign direct investment. A former practitioner from her tenure at London & Partners, the international promotional agency from the British capital, she is the Managing Director of Cities & Collaboration and Founder of fdiCampus, providing tailored strategy consultancy, training and mentoring to FDI executives globally. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Communications, an MBA from Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile, and an MA in Communications from Westminster University, UK.

David Coble is a Senior Economist at the Central Bank of Chile. His main research interests are International Economics and Applied Macroeconomics. He was previously the Chief Economist and Head of Research at InvestChile – the Chilean Government’s Foreign Investment Promotion Agency – where he worked developing the first Investment and Business Climate Survey and a system for evaluating the impact of InvestChile’s services to foreign companies. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Economics from the University of Chile, and a PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago, USA.

Toby X. Li is Assistant Professor of Strategy at Texas A&M’s Mays Business School, USA. His main research focus is corporate strategy and international business, covering topics that include alliances, contracting, stakeholder management and organisational learning. Prior to academia, he worked in the energy sector, where he was involved in helping formulate foreign investment and diversification strategies. He holds a PhD in Strategy from Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business, USA, an MPhil in Business Economics from the University of Cambridge, UK, and a BA in Economics from Brown University, USA.

Brendan Lewis is the President of RealSAM Inc in the United States, an artificial intelligence business with operations in the US, the UK, Australia and Italy. His past experience includes being a foreign investor into Vietnam, Indonesia and Romania, as well as representing Greater London in Australia for investment attraction, for 6 years. He holds qualifications in Information Systems from Curtin University, Australia, and Accounting from Monash University, Australia.