President Gitanas Nausėda invited foreign businesses to invest in Lithuania as he met global business leaders during his visit to New York.
Nausėda met on Wednesday with Ruth Porat, the chief financial officer of Alphabet and Google, as well as with representatives of Allianz Global Investors and the biotechnology company Novozymes.
According to Simonas Krėpšta, the president's economic advisor, Danish-owned Novozymes is planning to build a new production facility abroad.
"[We said] during the meeting that we have free economic areas that are very suitable for greenfield investments," the advisor told BNS by phone from New York.
"We found a common language and it was made clear during the meeting that this company would be interested to know what competencies people in Lithuania have and if they would be able to hire biotechnology specialists if they moved to Lithuania," he said.
The president and representatives of Allianz Global Investors spoke about the German-owned investment company's activities in financing various infrastructure projects, Krėpšta said.
On Wednesday, Nausėda also met with the head of the US private equity giant Blackstone Group which is buying Luminor, one of the largest pan-Baltic banks, he said.
The acquisition is likely to be completed within the next few weeks, according to the advisor.
The Lithuanian delegation and Blackstone also discussed possibilities for setting up a service center in Lithuania.
"We informed them about the possibilities and saw that they were interested [...] There was a clear message that they would look into this issue," Krėpšta said.
Nausėda also met with representatives of the telecoms company AT&T, the professional technical services company Jacobs Engineering Group, the data and telecoms equipment provider Motorola Solutions, the tobacco giant Philip Morris International and other businesses.
"The general message was that Lithuania has a very investment friendly business environment [...] and its political environment is stable and predictable," the presidential advisor said.
"A strong message was given that we have, at the top level, a favorable attitude to investments [...]," he said. "Companies are interested, otherwise they would not have come to the meeting".
Earlier this week, Nausėda met with Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman and invited the company to intensify its expansion in Lithuania.
The president is in New York for the UN General Assembly.
