Vilnius to take over from London after #Brexit?

I know I said I'd stop going on and on about the #Brexit, but there will be a few more sweep up stories.  This one is a special for Friday as it's already begun with Lithuanian MEP sending a letter to the leaders of London-based financial institutions stating the fantastic opportunities they could gain by moving offices to Vilnius.  Here is one example of that letter:

Dear Mr. Nathan Bostock,

I am very sorry that the U.K. decided to leave the European Union. The divorce process is going to be very long and protracted. I hope Britain will get stronger as soon as possible as we are all better off this way.

Today, among other things, you must be thinking about where to relocate your EU operations, so that you are able to access the European single market without restrictions. As a Member of the European Parliament and also the Chief Investment Officer of the City of Vilnius, I would like to invite you to explore Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.

In the recent years, global tech and financial companies discovered Vilnius and once they are here – they expand very rapidly. These companies are moving their shared services to value based functions like data mining, mobile technology development and IT architecture. Danske Bank which just moved their IT service centre for its group of companies is one of the three biggest investors in Lithuania. And a great British success story is Barclays. It has thousands of employees in Vilnius and just chose this city for one of their 6 start-up hubs in the world.

Vilnius is all about speed: it is the fastest growing city of millennials in the Baltics. The internet speed is fantastic. Lithuania is 1st in the EU in terms of both its broadband speed and fibre-to-premises penetration. In 2015 the country was voted 1st globally for fulfilling business requirements for communication technology by the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook. And we were the fastest in Europe to recover after the economic recession.

Vilnius is about flexibility. Uber took 4 weeks to establish, that was faster than any other city globally. It was also its first IT development center outside of Silicon Valley. Vilnius ranks amongst Top 10 European cities best for starting a business (by inc.com). It takes 3 days to fully setup in Vilnius, but we will go an extra mile and make things even faster. Vilnius municipality is open, flexible and business friendly. We will get everything you need.

Vilnius can offer great prices and great quality of life together with a multilingual talent hub of hard-working, tech minded and creative high-achievers. Vilnius is attracting a lot of talent from the region. Your employees won’t spend hours while commuting and they will be able to afford a nice house on a lakeshore 20 min drive from their office or a nice apartment in town.

Lithuania in general is striving to become a premium destination for investors, the country is already ranked 20th in the world according to Doing Business rankings, we are amongst world leaders in ease of starting a business, registering property and enforcing contracts. Just recently we adopted structural changes and liberalised our Labour law and immigration policy.

Finally, due to a big number of Scandinavian banks, financial talents and tech startups, we work on the policy side to allow Fintech development. I believe that blockchain technologies are the future and Vilnius is a place where you can test your boldest ideas.

Just send me an email to antanas.guoga@ep.europa.eu and I will personally connect you with everyone you need to know in this city.

Best regards,
Antanas Guoga (Lithuania)