How can we keep working and living well in the fast-growing city of Düsseldorf? A look at the property sector and city tourism reveals some promising solutions.

Jens Südekum, Professor of Economics at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, has been grappling with this hugely important question intensively since May 2025, when he became the personal advisor on macroeconomic development to Federal Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil. He is one of the key architects of the €500 billion Special Fund for Infrastructure and Climate Neutrality.

Scaleup programmes support young companies looking to take the leap into the next phase of growth by providing access to capital, mentoring, networking opportunities and strategic guidance. In North Rhine-Westphalia, Scale-up.NRW is regarded as a flagship programme, and Düsseldorf is playing a key part in it.

When the Düsseldorf-based company sino AG became the first investor in the Berlin-based startup Trade Republic in 2017, few could have imagined how rapidly it would grow to become one of Europe’s most valuable fintech companies. In this interview, sino CEO Ingo Hillen explains why it was precisely the combination of traditional brokerage experience and digital startup dynamism that laid the foundation for this extraordinary growth.