The Netherlands vs. the UK

Similar-to-US culture advantages with lower-than-UK costs

Often, many companies first look to locate their European sales and marketing operations in the UK because of its similar-to-US culture. However, the Netherlands offers you an equally compatible culture as well as something the UK cannot - closer proximity to customers. This advantage becomes even more critical to long-term pan-European success, as additional Central and Eastern European countries join the EU, moving the business "center of gravity" eastward, further away from UK-based locations.

In addition, a May 2005 Ernst & Young study that compared European headquarters locations showed the Netherlands significantly outperformed the UK (and most other major competitors) in both costs and benefits.

For example, the Ernst & Young study rated various countries on a 100-point rating scale in terms of overall costs and overall benefits as they related to European headquarters operations.

The chart below from the study shows the scores of the countries on overall costs on the first row, overall benefits on the second row and overall ranking at TOTAL.

Overall, the Netherlands outranks the UK and all other competitors, except for Switzerland.

In terms of specific key benefits, a direct comparison of the Netherlands vs. the UK indicates that the Netherlands is superior in terms of Transport, Labor Quality, Multilinguality, Centrality, Business Environment, ICT Infrastructure, Quality of Life and Prestige.