8th Annual CiCi Awards Introduction

Investment in business development and expansion is the lifeblood of our economy. Without new corporate development, our society would begin to crumble. Every single development counts, yet some are so extraordinary, either in their monetary value or in the impact they will have on a community, they deserve commemoration.

Trade & Industry Development magazine’s Corporate Investment & Community Impact (CiCi) Awards exclusively commemorate the extraordinary economic development deals in these two categories that were announced within the span of one year. This presentation of the 8th Annual CiCi Awards pays homage to 30 of the most notable deals in these categories (15 deals in each category) that were announced in 2012.

The CiCi Awards program is meant to be more than mere flattery to the CiCi honorees. Trade & Industry Development sees these Awards as a way for corporate executive site selectors to gain knowledge by examining the details of some really outstanding deals, including where they are locating,some of the state and local economic development agencies involved, some of the incentives offered, the types of industry and workforce talent that will be drawn to the areas of the new or expanded development, and many more nuances particular to each deal, which we succinctly explain.

The Awards also present an opportunity to identify trends in the world of economic development. This year, some trends were immediately apparent. First, there were fewer total outstanding deals to consider than in the past few years. We considered just about 400 deals this year.

While there were fewer of them that fit the parameters of consideration for  a CiCi Award, the deals we could consider involved considerably higher individual monetary investments than just last year. Seven individual companies in the 2013 CiCi Awards announced economic development deals in 2012 of $1 billion or more. Last year there was only one CiCi Award recipient that announced an investment of $1 billion.

Overall, the total of all of the investments by all 30 of the CiCi Award recipients in the 8th annual program is $23,486,711,340. Last year, the total investment by its 30 recipients was $11,619,020,000. In other words, the dollar amount of the investments announced by this year’s CiCi recipients was more than double that of last year. That’s more than $11 billion!

That $11 billion difference was pretty much evenly divided between the Corporate Investment and Community Impact categories. Breaking out the investments, this year (the deals announced in 2012) the Corporate Investment category totaled $16,249,000,000. Last year (the deals that were announced in 2011) the Corporate Investment category totaled $10,038,570,000, for a difference of $6.2 billion more in 2012. In the Community Impact category, of deals announced in 2012, the investment difference is a little more than $5.6 billion over 2011.

Trade & Industry Development theorizes there is a simple explanation for the year-over-year difference in economic development investment and activity that has come through with our CiCi Awards, and that is companies had pent-up plans to make large investments and were waiting to see some general improvement in the economy. When it became apparent that things were slowly turning around for the better in 2012, they made the leap. We believe others will follow their lead, especially those that can become profitable as a result of the new abundance of affordable natural gas in the U.S., as is the case with several of CiCi Award recipients this year.

Regardless of industry or investment amount, we invite all corporate site selectors to make the most of the information we reveal about the major deals announced in 2012, and use it as a leap pad for making extraordinary announcements of your own for our consideration next year.