Economic attractiveness and global competition: why executive leadership has become a matter of sovereignty

The figures are there, and they tell a two-sided story. For the sixth consecutive year, France ranked in 2024 as the European country having attracted the greatest number of international investments, with 1,025 projects, surpassing the United Kingdom and Germany.

Business France records 1,688 investment decisions by foreign companies and the creation or safeguarding of 37,747 jobs on French soil. On the surface, France is holding its own.

Yet the EY Attractiveness Barometer 2025 introduces a nuance that official press releases struggle to conceal: international executives are calling on Europe to address the structural challenges of competitiveness, innovation relative to the United States and China, and the adaptation of skills to the demands of tomorrow. In other words: the assets are there. What is sometimes lacking is the capacity to transform them — and that transformation begins with those who make the decisions.

Behind every investment decision stands an executive who commits. And in a world where comparative advantages are rebalancing at breakneck speed, the quality of leadership is becoming the last differentiator that cannot be bought, copied, or offshored.

A resilient attractiveness, but under pressure

France is holding firm. But that resilience is not without tension. 50% of executives surveyed at the end of 2024 felt that France's attractiveness had deteriorated. As a result, 49% of foreign investors had scaled back their investment plans. No outright cancellations, but a great many deferrals. And a great deal of wait-and-see.

Foreign investors perceive French industry as hampered by high labour costs and a lack of competitiveness. With an hourly cost of €46.3 in manufacturing, France faces a significant obstacle compared with European competitors such as Poland (€15.8) and Spain (€27.5).

These figures are well known. They have fuelled political debate for years. But they do not tell the whole story.

For whilst macroeconomic factors — taxation, labour costs, regulatory stability — continue to weigh heavily in the initial decision to invest, foreign executives point out that France's assets, including market size, available skills, and infrastructure, come up against short-term imperatives: profitability, stability, energy, and the means to fund the transition. These are execution problems. Leadership problems, at their core.

What global competition reveals about executives

Global competition has a cruel virtue: it reveals what proximity had concealed. When a company operates on its domestic market, certain leadership weaknesses remain invisible. Short circuits compensate. Shared culture lubricates. Decisions flow quickly, even without formalised processes. But the moment the horizon broadens — an acquisition in Central Europe, a deployment in Asia, a transatlantic strategic partnership — what was once vague suddenly becomes costly.

What globalisation reveals is not the incompetence of executives. It is that the postures which enabled them to build are not those which enable them to scale. The reflexes that drove success — control, direct involvement, swift decision-making at the top — can become, at scale, systemic obstacles.

This is precisely what is illustrated, through the concrete experience of executives, in this episode of the Visconti Partners podcast dedicated to the flow of competence as a key driver of sustainable growth: vision only produces lasting results when it is underpinned by an organisation and an executive capable of sustaining it over time.

This transition runs deep. It requires work. It requires, more often than not, an outside perspective.

Strategic vision in globalisation: the most systematically overlooked competitive advantage

In EY's March 2025 survey of 200 international executives, the principal perceived risks to European attractiveness are geopolitical tensions (35%), a difficult macroeconomic environment (34%), and trade barriers (30%). Largely exogenous factors — ones over which an executive has little direct influence.

Yet there is one constant among companies that successfully develop internationally, regardless of sector or size: the clarity of the vision carried by the executive. Not vision as an empty formula inscribed in a company charter. Vision as a genuine compass, capable of guiding teams dispersed across multiple time zones, of cutting through ambiguity, of inspiring during periods of doubt, and of resisting the constant temptation to revise everything in response to turbulence.

Foreign executives choosing to invest in France also seek this clarity in their local counterparts. 70% of foreign executives believe that France's attractiveness will improve by 2028, notably owing to France's economic standing and its strengths in the sectors of the future — AI, energy, defence. The confidence is there. What executives expect is that it translates into execution capacity.

And that execution capacity begins at the top. As the Visconti Partners article on managerial innovation at the heart of corporate strategy also demonstrates: in a context of accelerated transformation, innovation does not come solely from products or processes. It comes first and foremost from the way in which one leads.

Executive coaching: from a discreet tool to a recognised strategic lever

As recently as a decade ago, the use of an executive coach was often approached with ambivalence. Something one did not mention too openly. Sometimes perceived as an admission of weakness, or as a luxury reserved for large Anglo-Saxon organisations. That perception has changed profoundly.

The data speak unambiguously. According to a joint study conducted by PwC and the ICF, 86% of companies using executive coaching report a positive return on investment, and 96% say they would repeat the experience. Companies that used professional coaching support for commercial purposes saw a median return of seven times their initial investment, according to that same ICF–PwC study.

These figures are not marketing. They reflect a shift in paradigm: in the most competitive economies — the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Singapore — executive coaching has become standard practice in large companies, and a rapidly growing practice amongst mid-sized firms and scale-ups undergoing international transformation.

For executive coaching is not a matter of occasional check-ins, nor a therapeutic undertaking. It is a demanding form of support, grounded in reality, centred on strategic decision-making and leadership posture. Unlike management coaching, which works on managerial competencies within a defined scope, executive coaching operates at a different level altogether: that of vision, governance, and the way in which an executive builds legitimacy amid complexity and carries teams through uncertainty.

According to ICF and HBR data, 88% of coached executives report having strengthened their capacity to make difficult decisions, 76% feel their leadership style has evolved positively, and 81% observe a significant improvement in relations within their executive committee.

What Visconti Partners does differently

Since 2010, Visconti Partners has accompanied more than 300 executives and their executive committees each year, across all continents. The collective is composed exclusively of coaches who are themselves former company executives. That is what underpins the singularity of their approach.

For understanding what an executive experiences when faced with an internationalisation decision, a poorly integrated acquisition, or tension within an executive committee in the midst of transformation — that cannot be learnt from a manual. It is recognised, from experience.

This is precisely what the Visconti Partners executive coaching programme offers: a demanding, unfiltered space for exchange, in which the executive can test hypotheses, challenge their vision, identify blind spots, and recover the clarity of mind needed to make sound decisions in environments that do not wait.

The testimony of an executive accompanied in this framework is telling: "Whatever the stage of development, I strongly encourage entrepreneurs to seek support. It is only in hindsight that one realises it was, in fact, the obvious thing to do." Another adds, quoted on the Visconti website: "As an executive, there comes a moment when you need a sparring partner. At a certain point — when building a strategy, when challenging ideas — there are phases of work and maturation in which executives can feel quite alone. I am convinced that an executive must keep progressing, and to do that, one must accept the idea that we are not the best."

These words do not come from a brochure. They come from executives who have lived through the transformation.

France in global competition: a question of executives, first and foremost

According to INSEE, 18,800 companies are under foreign control in France, employing 2.3 million people and contributing 17% of GDP, 22% of private R&D, and 35% of industrial exports. These companies chose France. They could just as easily leave.

What keeps them — or brings them back — is not solely taxation or infrastructure. It is also the quality of the French executive teams with whom they work, negotiate, and co-create.

The EY report underlines that to restore an environment of confidence, France must act on its competitiveness and industrial sovereignty, whilst preserving its commitment to innovation, support for entrepreneurship, and investment in infrastructure.

These are collective endeavours. They fall within the purview of public policy, regulation, and financing. But they also depend — and perhaps above all — on the capacity of French executives to rise to the level of a competition that will not wait.

This is not a question of individual genius. It is a question of environment, practices, and structured support. And in this equation, executive coaching may well be the lever with the greatest untapped potential — and the least investment commensurate with the stakes.

A few questions to gauge the extent of the challenge

Before concluding, an invitation to an exercise in strategic honesty: Is your vision clear enough to guide teams in cultural contexts radically different from your own? Do you know how to delegate important decisions — not formally, but genuinely? Are your arbitrations guided by a clear direction, or are they subject to the rhythm of urgency? Do you have around you people capable of telling you what you do not wish to hear?

These questions do not call for paralysing introspection. They call for lucidity. And in global competition, lucidity may be the primary competitive advantage — the only one that cannot be offshored.

In phases of international transformation, the real difficulty is not simply finding the right markets. It is having the leadership capable of conquering them, and the strategic solidity to endure within them.

In brief:

• For the sixth consecutive year, France is the leading European destination for foreign investment — yet competitive pressures are intensifying (sources: Business France, EY Barometer 2025).
• International executives expect greater structural competitiveness from France and a reinforced capacity for execution.
• In global competition, the strategic vision of the executive is the least measurable differentiator — and the most decisive.
• Executive coaching generates a median ROI of seven times the initial investment, according to the PwC & ICF study, with 86% of companies reporting a positive return.
• Accompaniment by experienced peers — as Visconti Partners has offered since 2010 — is what enables executives to transform the pressure of global competition into a lever for growth.

Principal sources: 2024 and 2025 International Investment Reviews, Business France — EY France Attractiveness Barometer 2025 — ICF & PwC Global Coaching Client Study — ICF Human Capital Institute 2023 — Visconti Partners executive testimonials.