London Mayor Begins Drive to Keep City as Startup Hub for Europe

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has announced a new program of investment days for London startups, as he tries to maintain the U.K.’s position as a European hub for young tech companies, according to Bloomberg.

The U.K. national trade body for early stage companies will help run 20 investment days in London over the next four years, offering coaching and connections to potential investors, alongside $740,000 in funding.

In the wake of the Brexit vote other cities are making greater plays to attract entrepreneurs. French President  Emmanuel Macron has called to make his country “a startup nation,“ while local billionaire Xavier Niel has spent 250 million euros to transform a former Parisian freight station into a 34,000-square-meter startup campus containing 3,000 desks for rent.

The Mayor’s latest announcement comes almost a year after he launched a 7 million pound fund to give the city’s younger population access to jobs in the tech industry. Khan has also recently appointed the city’s first ever chief digital officer, Theo Blackwell.

In a February survey of 940 startup executives in the U.K. and other nations, one in 10 said they were considering shifting their headquarters onto the continent, with Paris, Berlin and Amsterdam often talked about as potential homes for future bases. Meanwhile, the message to overseas tech companies operating in London has been mixed. Uber is appealing a decision by London transport regulator to revoke the car service’s license.

Last year, Facebook said it planned to increase its U.K. headcount by 50 percent. Snap has also named London its international hub and Google plans to expand to accommodate as many as 3,000 additional staff there. “As Mayor, I’m quite clear if we’re to safeguard our competitiveness and our reputation for cutting edge innovation moving forward, we must stay true to our open and outlooking traditions," Khan said.