Price Parade

New York is cheap

As any corporate comptroller knows, it has long cost American companies a lot to station executives in the biggest European cities, like Paris, London and Rome. Now it appears that the living expenses that U.S. firms must foot are substantially higher than Yankee levels in all of the major business centers, including Lisbon, the cheapest European capital.

So reports Management Centre Europe, a Brussels-based consulting firm. Every six months, M.C.E. measures living costs in 16 European cities in comparison with New York, using as a yardstick the dollar value of a basket of 101 common items, among them food, clothing and bus and taxi rides. In its latest survey, M.C.E. found that all of its European cities were more expensive than the Big Apple, by total amounts that ranged from 16% for Lisbon to 67% for Stockholm, the costliest city. The Swedish capital has wrested that dubious distinction from Geneva, which is now No. 4 on the price parade, just behind Oslo and Brussels. The next six, in descending order of costliness: Copenhagen, The Hague, Paris, Vienna, Frankfurt and London.

One big gainer was London, which in six months moved from being 35% more expensive than New York to 53%, largely because a strengthening in the British pound has raised costs in terms of Yankee dollars. That has put the British capital in line with such middlingly expensive cities as Paris, Vienna and Frankfurt, which are all "only" about 55% costlier than New York.

On average, a New York-based sales director for a smallish (up to $40 million in revenues) U.S. firm is paid about $47,-000 a year, but in Geneva his European counterpart would be paid $82,000, while his secretary would get $35,000. Besides crimping the living style of U.S. executives, Europe's high prices give their companies a serious handicap. Says M.C.E. Director Clement Livingstone: "The costs are deterring American business from investing and competing abroad."

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