I was reading about the battle of the drugs corporations, US owned Pfizer wants to take over UK owned AstraZeneca. The sums involved read like telephone numbers and it will be the largest paid for a UK business if it goes through.
But thinking about it, and after a rush of patriotic nostalgia, how much major British owned business is left? A quick Google search threw up some recent and high profile sales:
- Rolls-Royce (cars) bought by Volkswagen Group for £430m in 1998
- Asda bought by American owned Wal-Mart for £6.7bn in 1999
- Powergen bought by Germany's E.on for £9.6bn in 2002
- O2 bought by Spain's Telefonica for £18bn in 2005
- BAA bought by Spain's Ferrovial for £10.3bn in 2006
- Alliance Boots bought by US investment firm KKR for £11.1bn in 2007
- Scottish & Newcastle (Newcastle Brown Ale) bought by Dutch owned Heineken and Denmark’s Carlsberg for £7.8bn in 2008
- Jaguar Landrover sold by Ford to Indian Car maker Tata
- Cadbury bought by US-based Kraft for £11.5bn in 2010 for £1.15bn in 2008
- Camelot (National Lottery) bought by a Canadian pension fund for £400m in 2010
- Raleigh (chopper and grifter
) bought by a Dutch firm Accell for £62m in 2012 - Weetabix bought by Chinese Bright Food Company for £1.2bn in 2012
- Branston Pickle bought by Japanese Mizkan Vinegar firm for £92.5m in 2012
- Sarsons Vinegar & Haywoods Pickled Onions bought by Mizkan for £41m in 2012
There's a few surprising ones like Camelot, and sad ones like Landrover.
But removing National pride, is foreign ownership a bad thing after all? Jaguar Landrover has gone from strength to strength with Tata after years of UK and Foreign mismanagement, takeovers, breakups, mergers, under-investment. Most of the vehicles are made here, the supply chain and technical skills are here, so are they British?
But you get the feeling that this sell off can't last forever and are enough new British big businesses growing in size to fill the void and balance the scales. Why is our business ripe for plucking and why aren't we out there buying Frances or Germany's utility companies or buying up American corporations?
Or are we destined to be a nation of shop keepers and historical nostalgia...
