Beyond China and India: Future Development Hubs Identified by Top Corporate Real Estate and Site Selection Experts

    CoreNet Global Summit Panelists Dub San Pedro Sula, Honduras, Sofia,
      Bulgaria Chengdu, China as 'Sleepers,' but Warn of Pitfalls

  SHANGHAI, China, Dec. 5 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- Shanghai and Bangalore
are well-known international development hotspots, but expert panelists at
the CoreNet Global Summit in Atlanta, have identified up-and-coming cities
that are expected to be the economic hubs of the future.

  In a session called "Around the World in 90 Minutes," panelists picked
dozens of cities in Asia, Europe and the Americas that offer a business
climate making them ripe for development by growing companies. Over 300
attendees attended the session, part of the corporate real estate and
workplace association's Global Summit meeting.

  When selecting European locations for manufacturing centers or Business
Process Outsourcing (BPO) offices, Rene Buck, President of Buck Consultants
International, advises companies to look for three differentiators before
citing a new European facility; talent, technology and connectivity.

  Buck, whose firm is one of Europe's leading independent location
consulting companies, said emerging business centers like
Glasgow/Edinburgh, Scotland and Istanbul, Turkey are among Europe's
brightest future development stars. But he added that Sofia, Bulgaria is,
"on the rise and will attract a lot of new companies."

  A prominent Asia expert, Dennis J. Meseroll, Director of Tractus Asia
Limited, a location consulting firm, said companies should look to second
and third tier cities that he calls "sleepers," which include Chengdu,
China, Orissa, India as well as Ho Chi Minh City/Hanoi, Vietnam.

  Despite the attractiveness of exotic new Asian and Eastern European
markets, Dennis Donovan, Principal of Wadley-Donovan-Gutshaw Consulting,
said North, Central and South America, "continues to be very strong," for
outsourced call centers and manufacturing centers.

  Donovan, a renowned site selection expert, calls places ranging from
Dickinson, North Dakota, to Hermosillo, Mexico to Santiago, Chile, among
the hottest future investment hotspots in the Western Hemisphere.

  Donovan told session attendees that, "Honduras is competitive with
China on cost," and suggested companies look at locations like that for
their relative political and currency stability, as well as a strong pool
of bilingual workers.

  Despite obvious upsides, like a well-trained labor market or relatively
low wages, the panelists all warned companies about to plunge into new
markets to avoid pitfalls, such as:



  -- Herd mentality
  -- Making location decisions on country-level data
  -- Relying on secondary data
  -- Regulatory change, and others
  A recent CoreNet Global location decision survey indicated that North
America remains the market of choice, followed by emerging markets such as
Eastern Europe and Asia.

  For example, Mark Gorman, Global Real Estate Leader for Nortel, said of
Moscow that the Russian capital has "a lot of really cool buildings that
architects will love, but get an engineer to show up because there may not
be enough power to turn the lights on."

  About CoreNet Global

  CoreNet Global is the world's premier association for corporate real
estate and related professionals. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, USA,
the global learning organization is the industry thought and opinion
leader, plus the only professional real estate group that convenes the
entire industry.

  Today, CoreNet Global's members manage US $1.2 trillion in worldwide
corporate assets of owned and leased office, industrial and other space.
With nearly 7,000 members representing large organizations around the
world, CoreNet Global operates in five global regions: Asia/Japan,
Australia, Europe, Latin American and North America.