Foreign Power Seeking investors? Looking overseas could be your company's best bet.

Growth companies seeking investment capital should turn theirattention overseas, according to Joe Huard, a founding principalwith investment banking and brokerage firm Shamrock Partners Ltd.in Media, Pennsylvania. "Investors in Europe and Asia areanxious to cash in on American companies," says Huard. Thereare several reasons for this, some financial, some strategic.

First, Huard says, while in the United States everybody and hisbrother has a business plan and a deal, it's not the same inmany foreign countries. "There simply isn't the samevolume of investment opportunities in many foreign countries,"he explains.

Not that there's a total dearth of opportunities. The manybourses and stock exchanges around the globe traffic in establishedmultibillion-dollar enterprises that most North Americans havenever even heard of. But these are established companies. To findexciting young companies, ones with new technologies or productsthat can open vast markets virtually overnight, foreign investorshave to hunt further afield. "And their hunting frequentlybrings them to U.S. shores," says Huard.