Bavaria - an excellent location for business

Welcome to one of Europe’s strongest business regions

A strong and a strongly-growing region: Bavaria’s GDP of €444,8 billion is larger than those of 20 of the EU’s 27 member states. Bavaria’s GDP per capita amounts to €35,530—well above Germany and EU-wide averages (as of 2008). This large-sized income helps makes Bavaria a market with a correspondingly large purchasing power.

The main hubs of this strong region are Munich and Nuremberg, themselves two of the world’s top-ranked metropolitan areas.

As exports of more than €155,7 billion in 2008 amply detail, Bavaria’s business community knows how to make products sought by the world market. It all adds up to “Europe’s high-tech mecca”, in the words of Bill Gates. The amazing thing about Bavaria: five decades ago, it was an underdeveloped backwater.

Bavaria’s business community shows a great diversity of size and sector. It is comprised of such global players as Allianz, Siemens, BMW, Audi, EADS, Adidas, Puma and MAN—and of the large number of SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) and skilled trades operations providing the global players with the supplies and services helping give them their competitive edge.

All of the state’s businesses profit from the large number of purchasers of their products and services based in the state—and from the state’s network of innovation, which is behind the creation of these advanced, high-performing items.

This network is responsible for Bavaria’s being at the leading edge in all sunrise sectors, with these including ICT (information and communication technologies), the life sciences (and especially biotechnologies and medical engineering), and energy and environmental technologies.

Its service sector constitutes an especially strong part of Bavaria’s business community. The sector’s main components are finance (Bavaria has Germany’s largest insurance community, and the country’s second largest banking one); tourism (thanks to the state’s being one of the world’s favorite places to visit, shop and meet); trade fairs and congresses (Munich and Nuremberg are world top-ten venues) and B2B services.

A basic factor boosting all of these companies is the state’s infrastructure—the high-capacity, ultra-reliable transport, telecommunication and energy grids making the state an integral part of world markets and systems. Like the state’s education system and R & D network, these grids have been the objects of considerable and sustained investment by the state. This investment has produced a top-ranked system of secondary, post-secondary and occupational education, plus R & D institutes turning out innovations which have changed the world. Key figure: more than 3% of Bavaria’s GDP goes to R & D.

Bavaria is a great place in which to work. It is also a great place in which to live, thanks to its longstanding, lovingly cultivated traditions, its wealth of cultural offerings, its sweep of cosmopolitan cities, picturesque villages and beautiful, wonderfully pristine countryside; and its world-best level of personal safety.

The wish to be part of this business community and to profit from all these factors has led more than 1,500 foreign high-techs to set up subsidiaries in Bavaria. Many of these Bavaria-based operations serve as their companies’ headquarters for Germany and for Europe as a whole.

Our invitation: join these companies—and us—in Bavaria!

The first step towards doing so is to get a great briefing from Invest in Bavaria’s team of experts. We’re looking forward to helping you!

Martin Zeil
Minister of Economic Affairs, Infrastructure, Transport and Technology
State of Bavaria