Chicago is unapologetically a business town, always has been.
Being business friendly is common sense. Business is the goose that lays the golden eggs – jobs, taxes, cultural support, and philanthropy.
Chicago’s strategic location, peerless infrastructure, leading business schools, and omni-cultural workforce have created one of the world’s largest and most diversified economies.
Metropolitan Chicago is a key player in virtually every sector of the American economy, and a dominant or leading player in a dozen industries.
It is perhaps only natural that the place that transformed the world with its “Chicago School” of market-driven economics should itself be constantly adapting to challenges and opportunities, reinventing itself.
The last economic cycle saw explosive employment growth – driven by a diversified economy and cosmopolitan quality of life – in the Business Services sectors: the intellectual-value-added skill sets that are the “software” of a globalizing economy.
Chicago’s world-leading exchanges are a great example. In just a few years the two largest have demutualized and incorporated as for-profit corporations, gone to hugely successful IPO’s, transitioned to electronic trading, and left the New York Stock Exchange playing catch up by trying to merge with Chicago’s largest all-electronic exchange.
A “business friendly government” means a government that knows that it has some fundamental responsibilities, with public education and major infrastructure investment chief among them.
While other cities have stumbled and postponed, Chicago has continued to invest at the rate of nearly a billion dollars a year in infrastructure – schools, roads, parks, public transportation. And airports. Its two City-operated airports serve more destinations with more flights than any airport in the world – and they are undergoing dramatic efficiency improvements.
A third of all American nonstop flights to China originate in Chicago, a city whose Public Schools offer the largest (and what the central government of China considers the best) Chinese language K-12 program in America. These are strategic examples of what Chicago means by “business friendly.”
The private sector and the Federal government have likewise transformed America’s traditional telecommunications hub into the world’s fastest, highest capacity, and most redundant digital infrastructure. This makes Chicago the data recovery capital of North America – and allows our financial exchanges to connect to Asian and European financial capitals in real time.
International five-star hotels, superb restaurants, major league sports, world-cool entertainment, globally renowned cultural institutions, and a smorgasbord of executive and management lifestyle options nearly complete the picture.
A critical component of Chicago’s business friendly environment is the active and engaged leadership role that businesses are welcomed – indeed expected – to play in improving the public good.
Chicago knows that contemporary businesses want to be good corporate citizens and so it collaborates in partnership with them to build a better life for all.
Working together we are building the American dream – to show the world and to live, work days and weekends.
-- Paul O'Connor
Executive Director