Follow the occupier, follow the capital

Global foreign direct investment (FDI) is growing again. UN Trade & Development, the division that tracks global investment flows, estimates that FDI rose 6% to $1.6 trillion in 2025, ending two years of decline. But the headline number obscures a more interesting change in what global investment increasingly looks like.

Capital is concentrating in strategic sectors with substantial physical requirements. AI infrastructure, semiconductors, critical minerals and energy-transition technologies accounted for 44% of announced greenfield investment value in 2025, up from 16% in 2020. Data centres alone attracted more than $270 billion in announced investment.

These are FDI projects, but they are also real estate and infrastructure projects.

A semiconductor fab requires a large investment-ready site, vast quantities of reliable electricity and water, transport infrastructure and a network of suppliers. A hyperscale data centre needs land, buildings, grid connections and increasingly dedicated energy infrastructure. Advanced manufacturing creates demand for industrial property and supplier facilities, while the restructuring of supply chains generates requirements for logistics and distribution assets.

The corporate investment decision is therefore becoming increasingly difficult to separate from the physical assets that enable it.

This also expands the cast of participants in economic development. Investment promotion has traditionally concentrated heavily on the multinational company: attract the company, secure the project, and the investment follows.

But major projects increasingly sit within a broader capital ecosystem. Developers, infrastructure funds, pension funds, sovereign investors, real estate investment managers, utilities and lenders may all finance, develop or own parts of the infrastructure surrounding the corporate investor.

Data centres provide an extreme but instructive example. JLL estimates that delivering nearly 100 GW of additional global capacity by 2030 will require some $3 trillion of investment. No single corporate investor is delivering that ecosystem alone.

For institutional investors, this suggests a useful principle: follow the occupier, follow the capital.

Corporate location decisions can provide an early signal of where future demand for real estate and infrastructure may arise. A major manufacturing plant can stimulate demand for supplier facilities, logistics space and energy infrastructure. Data centre clusters create requirements for generation, grids and digital networks. Expanding life sciences and technology clusters need laboratories, R&D facilities and specialist workspace.

Understanding which industries are expanding, where companies are placing new capacity and what drives those location decisions therefore matters well beyond the companies making the investments.

Crucially, the relationship runs both ways. Occupier investment creates demand for assets, but the availability of suitable sites, power, infrastructure and specialist real estate can determine whether a destination captures the corporate investment in the first place. Institutional capital can therefore help create the conditions for FDI as well as respond to it.

For too long, FDI and real estate have largely existed as neighbouring conversations. Economic development agencies talk about companies, jobs and capital expenditure; property investors about assets, occupiers and returns. Yet much of the investment reshaping economies today sits between the two.

That intersection is what Property Forum will be exploring in greater depth, and I am very pleased to have joined as a Strategic Advisor for FDI. Follow along as we examine where international investment is moving, why companies choose particular places, what those decisions mean for real estate and infrastructure, and how institutional capital can participate in the growth they create.

Courtney Fingar

Strategic Advisor - FDI
Property Forum

Courtney Fingar is a leading expert on foreign direct investment (FDI) and a business editor with more than 20 years of experience. She has covered business stories in all major regions of the world and has been on assignment to more than 80 countries, interviewing government and business leaders. She has appeared on television and radio in dozens of countries as a commentator and has twice been called to give evidence to the UK Parliament about inward investment. An in-demand moderator, master of ceremonies and keynote speaker, Courtney has participated in hundreds of business events globally and advises event organisers on content and strategy. In 2023, she set up Fingar Direct Investment, a boutique consultancy focusing on investment promotion and attraction. She also serves as Senior Advisor for the World Association of Investment Promotion Agencies (WAIPA), among other responsibilities, and recently joined Property Forum as a Strategic Advisor for FDI. She previously served as the Editor-in-Chief of Investment Monitor, a digital publication focused on cross-border investment, and before that spent 15 years with the Financial Times, where she ran the group’s specialist FDI publication. Ms Fingar has a BA in journalism from the University of Alabama in the United States and an MSc in International and European Politics from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. More »