DANNY LOPEZ

Our man in...new W

CONSUL-GENERAL IN NEW YORK AND DIRECTOR GENERAL OF UK TRADE & INVESTMENT IN THE UNITED STATES

Danny Lopez spent 10 years at Barclays Bank and was managing director of UK Trade & Investment’s marketing group before leading the creation of London & Partners. He moved to his new post in July 2011 and writes about his new role

hen I landed in New York City, to say that I couldn’t wait to get started is quite the understatement. I lived in New York in the early 2000s working for Barclays and had always hoped to return. Over the years I have travelled extensively across the US, visiting 27 states; this is a country I love. Our nine UK Trade & Investment teams

across the US work hard to unearth opportunities for UK companies and deliver attractive propositions for US investors. Last year alone, our US-based staff supported 190 US companies either setting up or expanding operations

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in the UK and worked with more than 3,000 UK-based fi rms looking for opportunities in the States. We live in challenging times and the global economy looks very different to how it did when I last lived here. However, one thing hasn’t changed – the US is still the land of opportunity. The US has the largest and most technologically powerful economy in the world. It is the UK’s biggest export market, is responsible for our highest trade surplus and it tops the list of nations as our leading source of inward investment. This is a big country with big opportunities.

The Prime Minister recently

highlighted the importance of unlocking global trade to achieve economic potential. I fi nd it reassuring to rediscover that there is still a lot of business to be done in the US. The sheer size of the country and vast cultural differences across the 50 states, however, mean that it should often be treated as a series of regional markets with varying characteristics. UK Trade & Investment in the US has 120 staff with teams in nine cities: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco and Washington D.C.