The foreign legion.

• Author: Stevenson, Steve
• Position: North Carolina's largest foreign-owned companies - Directory

If you doubt foreign-owned companies are changing North Carolina, listen to Jim Carrier of Swiss-owned Schindler Elevator Corp. "Sampson County is known for being the largest hog-producing county in the country. By the end of the year, we expect to be the No. 1 escalator-producing county as well," predicts Carrier, human-resources manager for the company's two escalator-manufacturing plants in Clinton.

Schindler, a 125-year-old, $3 billion Swiss company that bought Westinghouse's elevator and escalator division in 1989, set its sights on becoming the world's largest escalator maker when it came to North Carolina. It reached the top four years after opening its Clinton plans, but it's at the bottom of BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA's list of the 100 largest foreign-owned employers in the state -- a testament to the strength and size of the players in that pool. N.C. Department of Commerce counts 815 foreign-owned companies in the state.

It sometimes takes foreign businesses awhile to find their way here, says Steve Stevenson, director of the Research Triangle Park-based Institute of Foreign Investment in America, who compiled the ranking for BNC. "Very often [their executives] get off the plane in New York City and say, 'Well, this is America, plant the flag.'" It could be years before they look around the rest of the country, he says.

The qualities that attract companies from, say, Italy are the same that attract them from Illinois: low-cost labor and land, a strong university system, incentives, a favorable business climate. That's what prompted Canadian-owned Northern Telecom (No. 2) to come to the Triangle in 1973 and Japanese-owned Konica Manufacturing USA (No. 75) to build a plant near Greensboro in 1989.

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