President Francois Hollande sought to woo sceptical investors back to France on Monday, telling global business chiefs his government had no fear of foreign capital, reports GlobalPost.
Anxious to bring the French economy back to sustained growth and turn around his record-low poll numbers, Hollande met some 30 top executives at the Elysee Palace for talks on France's business climate.
The heads of leading companies including Volvo, Bosch, Siemens, Samsung, General Electric, Intel and Nestle were joined at the talks by chiefs of sovereign wealth funds from Gulf nations and China.
The meeting comes after France suffered a 77 percent drop in foreign direct investment (FDI) last year, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, while neighbouring Germany saw its FDI quadruple.
"We are not afraid of capital that comes to invest in France, we do not want to protect ourselves," Hollande said after the meeting.
He said a key goal was to "increase investments from emerging countries", who account for only about 10 percent of capital inflows to France.
Read more of this AFP report published by GlobalPost.