Cendant Mobility's mid-December report "2005 Worldwide Benchmark Study: Emerging Trends in Global Mobility: China" found that many of its respondents from 109 global corporations and headquarters "expect to see a sharp increase in executive assignment volume to cities such as Chengdu, Dalian, Tianjin, Qingdao, Shangyang and Chongqing. While only a small minority of multinational companies are currently active in these cities, the number of companies looking to them as assignment destinations within the next three years has grown by more than 50 percent on average."

"Companies are responding to these growing demands by aggressively recruiting and developing talent within China itself," said Dan Shao, Cendant Mobility chief representative in China. "Tellingly, 53 percent of companies reported a heightened outbound transfer of Chinese citizens, suggesting interest in sending executives abroad to gain global exposure and bring back advanced management skills."

But evidence of a disconnect is clear: While only 22 percent of responding companies considered "family suitability" in the selection of assignees to China, family circumstances, spousal career concerns and poor family adjustment continue to top the lists of reasons for assignment failure or refusal in China.

A.T. Kearney in early December released its Foreign Direct Investment Confidence Index.® India has overtaken the U.S. for second place in attractiveness as a future FDI destination. U.S. companies continue to hold onto their cash even as global inflows of FDI are on the rise for the first time since 2000. And the firm’s survey of executives seems to jibe with project results coming in to Conway Data’s New Plant Database: R&D is following manufacturing to Eastern Europe and Asia. Top criteria for R&D location cited by executives are lower R&D costs, availability and quality of local R&D labor, intellectual property protection, quality of universities and research centers and IT infrastructure.

The news comes amid calls for extending the federal R&D tax credit, which officially expired on December 31. "For nearly 16,000 companies of all sizes in all 50 states, the R&D credit helps boost their investment in crucial research done here at home," said NAM Senior Director for Tax Policy Monica McGuire. "As the current credit expires, the cost of such R&D for these companies will immediately begin to rise ... Canada, Ireland, China, France and many other economic competitors are actively courting U.S. R&D activity with a variety of incentives. If lawmakers don't quickly turn to extending and strengthening our own R&D credit when they get back to work next year, they'll have to accept responsibility if research formerly done here in America moves overseas." NAM is also offering a progress report card on manufacturers’ agenda items. Tax reconciliation bills passed by both the House and Senate included similar provisions for extending and expanding the tax credit program, which would allow companies to recoup up to 10 percent of R&D spending. But the two bodies must reconcile differences in their overall tax relief bills when they reconvene later in January.

A new report entitled "Office Condos: Here to Stay or Gone Tomorrow?" released by Grubb & Ellis and PNC Real Estate Finance finds that "Phoenix, with 73 office condo projects recently completed, 20 under construction and 33 planned, is the office condo capital of the nation." Nearly 60 percent of brokers surveyed said they’d proceed with caution in further office condo development, but at the same time, said the report, "growing markets with a high percentage of service clients serving the local population and business base are well suited for office condos."

Among the batch of year-end statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau was a projection that the United States is expected to register one birth every eight seconds and one death every 12 seconds. Net international migration is expected to add one person every 31 seconds. The result is an increase in the total population of one person every 14 seconds. The country’s population on Jan. 1, 2006, was projected to be 297,821,175.

Of more direct relevance to corporate real estate was the Census report on the truck transportation, courier and messengers, and warehousing and storage sectors. Their cumulative revenues tallied $266 billion in 2005, led by the trucking industry’s 10.4-percent year-over-year climb to $186 billion.

Finally, it may come as no surprise that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid accounted for more than $1 trillion of the $2.2 trillion the federal government spent in fiscal year 2004. But defense spending does its share, according to the Consolidated Federal Funds Report for Fiscal Year 2004. Which five states topped the list for defense spending? California, Virginia, Texas, Florida and Maryland.