If Deutsche Börse CEO Theodor Weimer is to be believed, the list of Germany's shortcomings as a business location is now so long that it is driving investors away, and even making company bosses cry.

Amazon would only laugh at that. The company is the third of the three major US hyperscalers to give its seal of approval to Germany as a business location, with a 17.8 billion investment plan. This includes a huge expansion of cloud infrastructure from the world's biggest provider. Last year Google also announced more than 1 billion euros of investment in the Berlin and Frankfurt areas. And Microsoft has plans for 3 billion euros of data centre investment in Germany over the next two years.

When it comes to investing in digital infrastructure, Germany evidently has a lot going for it. The demand for future-proof cloud solutions is seen as a huge growth market throughout Europe, making even scarce property resources and high energy costs seem manageable for providers in this country. What's more, the security standards, which have been criticised as expensive and off-putting and have already been the downfall of one or two „German clouds“ for cost reasons, are now being presented by these investors as a locational advantage. Whatever fulfils German standards should therefore become a flagship in the rest of the world.

What's more, these investments are even being made without help from the state, while the government in Big Tech's home country prefers to attract investment with hundreds of billions of dollars of spending via the Inflation Reduction Act. Meanwhile, Germany is also finding favour as a production location for other future technologies, namely Big Pharma. Eli Lilly, which is pumping 3 billion euros into a plant near Mainz, also has good reasons for this, for example synergies with research, and a highly qualified workforce.