The cafe in Shanghai.  Some of our most important customers at the embassy in Kyiv are people representing British businesses who ask for advice, or for help in approaching the Ukrainian authorities on specific issues.  We can't always achieve the results we want; but sometimes we can, and in some cases have scored important results.  Our efforts to make a difference for British businesses are helped by the fact that many individual decision-makers within the Ukrainian government are keen to encourage foreign direct investment and are open to suggestions from embassies and others about how to make things work better.  They understand the damage which decisions (or lack of decisions) about, for example, VAT refunds or hydrocarbon exploration licences or planning permissions can do, not only to investment decisions by individual foreign companies but to Ukraine's whole reputation as a destination for inward investment.

Reputation is what it's all about.  That why I often quote in speeches in Ukraine the example of the three top international business people sitting in a cafe in Shanghai.  Each investor controls funds worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.  As they look out at the Bund and sip their decaf cappucinos, they discuss where they should invest that money.  Where, they muse, is the investment climate so straightforward for foreign businesses that it is easy to recommend that multinational companies make big investments?  In which countries is the government so committed to attracting inward investors that it welcomes them with open arms?  Where can investors feel confident that the tax, legislative and regulatory framework is stable and predictable?  And where can they be confident that the courts will always enforce the rule of law in a transparent and fair way?

The investors in the cafe in Shanghai are hard-bitten and experienced.  They know that not all countries meet all these criteria; and that in some cases, big risks can be balanced by big potential rewards.  But it's the job of every country seeking inward investment - including Ukraine - to make sure that when our Shanghai experts are looking at the global choice of investment opportunities, from China to India to Germany to Bahrain to Brazil to the United Kingdom and elsewhere,  their country is up there near the top of the list.  This isn't always a quick process: it requires action across many different policy areas.  But the potential prizes are enormous, dwarfing anything the international financial institutions or bilateral donors can offer.  There's no doubt Ukraine could realise its vast potential more quickly if it could attract more inward investment.  To do that, Ukrainian government - including whatever new government is formed after the presidential election next January - needs to think how to persuade those investors sitting in their cafe in Shanghai that this week, this month, this year, Ukraine is one of the best places in the world in which to invest their money.