Global finance and the development of regional clusters: Tracing paths in Munich's film and TV industry

Abstract

Recent work in economic geography has provided notable insights into the regional implications of finance-driven capitalism. In particular, it has been argued that the pressures created by the prioritisation of shareholder value and the rise of new financial agents, such as private equity and hedge funds, are disembedding regional social relations, and empirical evidence illustrates the devastating effects that the short-term profit orientation of these agents can have on local economic development. The relationship between a local economy's integration into the global capitalist system and its development performance is, however, more ambiguous than might be expected. This article explores this connection in greater detail within the context of a regional cluster, namely the film and TV industry cluster in Munich - one of the leading centres for this type of industry in Germany - by means of addressing the adjustments related to the entry of foreign investors after the insolvency of the Kirch Group in 2002. Initially, the research adds weight to the suspicion that financial agents erode the long-term wealth- and employment-generating capacities of national corporations. In addition, however, the results also reveal the dynamic restructuring processes triggered by these players which, at least in the specific case investigated, provided an acknowledged corrective and contributed to the cluster's recent resurgence. © The Author (2009). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.