Businesses that have once invested in the United Kingdom
As the United Kingdom is going down the road in the direction of a detachment from the EU, numerous individuals, specialists and average people alike, have started fretting about the likely repercussions on the United Kingdom’s economy. The country will in the end be abandoning the world’s greatest trading bloc and that will not be without a bit of aftershock. But Britain has always been successful at interacting on the international stage, even in periods of splendid isolation. And over its time in the EU, it still made lots of business with non-EU states as well. We suggest to take a peek at some major cases of foreign firms based in non-EU nations investing in the British market, either by purchases or by infrastructure development. Possibly this can reassure some people that even though there will be a relatively tough split, there is still a world of opportunity out there, as good or perhaps even better than the three examples brought up below.
Britain was the target of Japan’s largest ever foreign acquisition. In 2006, the FMCG organisation whose CEO at the time was Hiroshi Kimura made a seven-and-a-half billion pound bid for a London-based challenger. The successful culmination of this bid enabled his corporation to become one of the largest in its sector internationally as well as give it a very solid foothold on the British market. It also helped the organization offset its own falling revenues within its home market and to dramatically diversify its portfolio. Without a doubt, this investment paid off profoundly for the corporation.
Iceland generally isn’t very widely recognized for its notable corporations, especially given that it is a country of just three hundred thousand people, and it is very clearly not a member of the EU despite being in Europe, but one of its significant enterprises has grown to be international and has even chosen the UK as a place for business. Lydur Gudmundsson’s food business selling everything for fresh fish to ready-made meals really cemented its reputation on the British market in 2005 with a half a billion pound purchase of a local player. It saw the opportunities of the UK market and selected to act upon it.
After the recession of 2008 there was a huge slouch on the property market of much of Europe, especially the United Kingdom. It is excellent then that foreign money was ready to help out. Irvine Sellar’s development firm was working on creating the tallest building in the London and in Europe and it would not have gotten off the ground had it not been for a Qatari consortium consenting to invest a few hundred million pounds into its building and construction. Surely, this investment has paid off at a minimum in giving London a good addition to its horizon.
