PARIS, Jan. 22 (Xinhua) -- French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday invited 140 world's main business leaders to a summit on French competitiveness in a bid to shed more light on the country's assets and draw more flows into domestic market.
A high-profile gathering, including top executives mainly from Coca-Cola, Google, JP Morgan, Facebook, Alibaba, JD.com and Novartis joined 16 ministers for a dinner at the iconic Chateaux de Versailles.
"To every business leader across the world: here is why you should invest in France," Macron wrote on his tweeter account.
"Three reasons to do the same we are providing more flexibility for your company ... reinforcing the strength of our innovation system and offering a win-win approach," he said.
Macron, an ex-investment banker, was scheduled to meet Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook), Sundar Pichai (Google), Vasant Narasimhan (Novartis) and Bill McDermott (SAP).
Bruno Le Maire, Finance Minister, welcomed the participation of CEOs from around the world that, according to him, mirrored France's attractiveness.
"It's a good day because many of these investors announced concrete projects that will create jobs in France," the minister said.
"The objective of this meeting is to show that thanks to measures we have taken, investors who avoided France returned to it," he added.
Earlier on Monday, the world's second biggest auto maker Toyota said it planned to invest 300 million euros (368 million U.S. dollars) in its plant in Onnaing, north France. The new investment will create 700 permanent jobs.
Facebook planned a 10-million-euro investment in its French artificial intelligence center.
"We kind of forgot this, but the French are very innovative. We must re-awaken this," French president said during a visit to Toyota site.
Other announcements were expected during the meeting.
According to the news channel BFMTV, world business leaders would pour a total investment of 3.5 billion euros over the next five decades that would help to create 2,200 jobs.
