Louisiana And North Carolina Lead In New Rankings Of Top U.S. Corporate Investments

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Recently, Trade & Industry Development magazine announced its sixth annual Corporate Investment and Community Impact, or CiCi, Awards in which three of Louisiana's business development projects from 2010 received awards. Louisiana and North Carolina tied for the most project awards in the South, with three each.

Nucor Corp. in Convent, La., (up to 1,250 new direct jobs) was selected as one of the top 15 new Corporate Investment projects announced in the U.S. for 2010. Blade Dynamics in New Orleans (600 new direct jobs) and DG Foods in Bastrop, La., (317 new direct jobs) were selected as two of the top 15 in the U.S. for Community Impact.

"In December, Louisiana was named 'State of the Year' nationally by Business Facilities magazine, and then just last week Site Selection magazine ranked Louisiana third best in the U.S. in new business development projects for 2010," said Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Stephen Moret. "Now, Trade & Industry Development magazine announced that Louisiana tied with North Carolina in securing more high-impact corporate investment projects in 2010 than any other Southern state. We will continue to work hard every day to help position Louisiana's economy to outperform the South and U.S. on a regular basis."

Since January 2008, LED has secured projects that will create more than 39,500 new direct and indirect jobs and more than $8.5 billion in new capital investment, as well as billions in new sales for small businesses.

According to Trade & Industry Development, hundreds of submissions were considered for project announcements that were finalized in the previous year. The Corporate Investment projects ranking is based on projects that have the largest number of new jobs, largest number of retained jobs and highest total amount of capital investment. The Community Impact projects ranking is determined by a variety of factors, including the number of new jobs created, number of current jobs retained, unemployment figures, income level of the region and recent economic challenges overcome.

Over the last few months, Louisiana has received accolades from a variety of national organizations for its economic development efforts. For example, in August 2010, Pollina Corporate Real Estate named Louisiana the most improved state for business in the U.S. In November 2010, Site Selection magazine ranked Louisiana's business climate ninth best in the U.S., which represented Louisiana's first appearance in the top 10. In December, Business Facilities magazine named Louisiana its national "State of the Year" for Louisiana's recent business climate reforms, business development wins in 2010, innovative incentive programs, economic growth strategy and world-class workforce training program, Louisiana FastStart™.