Despite the UKTI’s optimistic overview, the UK’s investment abroad has been in decline for two years to the lowest record level in 2009. Foreign investment in the UK has not fared much better for the first time bucking an upward trend since 2008.
More important perhaps is it shows how much economically the EU and Britain are tied to each other.
On 27 March 2017 the Telegraph reported that :
“As many as 24,145 UK businesses are owned by companies located abroad according to figures from the Office for National Statistics.
The extent of foreign ownership varies significantly across sectors, with it being most widespread among companies engaged in mining and quarrying.
US-based companies owned more UK businesses than those from any other country, with 5,378 in 2015 – the latest year for which figures are available.
Second on this list was Germany with 1,824 businesses, followed by France on 1,497 and the Netherlands on 1,463.
Chinese firms owned a comparatively small number of UK businesses at 106, however this number grew by 20.5% between 2014 and 2015. This makes China one of the fastest expanding countries when it comes to foreign ownership of UK businesses, albeit from a low base.
However, Hong Kong companies are expanding the number of businesses they own in the UK at the fastest rate – up by 25.6% over the same period.”
By Patrick Scott
According to the latest ONS report that in 2015 the largest 25 Foreign owned companies were responsible for 51% of total Foreign investment assets in the UK. After these 25, the next 25 companies account for only 10% and there is a kind of rapid diminishing returns where the mounting number of companies adds an increasingly small contribution to total assets.
All companies made up 83% of total FDI investment, the rest were purely financial holdings in monetary institutions and undefined A N Other investments.