The American Chamber of Commerce, or AmCham, is set to open a Brabant chapter in 2010, and the plans AmCham has devised together with the BOM Foreign Investments in this regard are as good as complete. One of the reasons behind this new Brabant branch is the successful seminar hosted by AmCham and the BOM earlier this year for American companies based in the region, which saw some 75 interested parties convening at the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven.

American companies make up the largest proportion of all the foreign companies located in Brabant, and their 275 branch offices comprise no less than 25 percent of all foreign activities in the province. In terms of the number of direct jobs, the figure is even greater at 40 percent, and US companies are responsible for almost 31,000 of the 80,000 jobs created to date in Brabant through foreign investment. These Brabant-based American companies are primarily engaged in production, logistics and the high-tech sector.

Much was said during the High Tech Campus seminar about the vitality of the Brabant economy and the share of that provided by US companies, many of them leading ones. This was the first time that the AmCham, which both represents American trade and industry based in the Netherlands and lobbies on its behalf, had organised such a gathering in the southern region of the Netherlands, this time together with BOM. These conventions almost always take place in the so-called Randstad area - the urban conglomeration around Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam where most American companies have their homes. However, US companies based in Brabant have voiced a preference for holding meetings in ‘their own region', with the geographic location of Brabant as regards the Randstad playing a major role in this. A number of major American companies in the area have now promised to assist in the creation of an AmCham Brabant chapter, while the Eindhoven University of Technology will also be joining hands with AmCham and BOM to give shape to the Brabant branch.

The AmCham Brabant chapter hopes to host four meetings in 2010, each highlighting a specific matter that is of interest to US companies based in the area. The meetings will start with a short speech by an interesting speaker, however the participants will have ample opportunity to meet and network with one other.

For further information, please contact: Bodo de Wit (T +31(0)6-15249859, E bdewit@bom.nl).