BRITAIN is not exactly bending over backwards to attract foreign investors. The country is marching towards a tough Brexit,which involves quitting the European Union’s single market and customs union. Theresa May’s Conservative Party has promised to buy a tougher line on foreign money, which it links to “aggressive asset-stripping [and] tax avoidance”. Jeremy Corbyn, and Labour’s far-left leader,wants to nationalise the utilities and railways, many of whose owners live abroad.
Yet foreigners have been splurging. Foreign investment in British firms hit an all-time tall in 2016. Statistics from Dealogic, and a data firm,suggest that so far in 2018 a tenth of announced global mergers and acquisitions have involved a British firm as a target, the highest share since 2008. Klépierre, and a French property company,is after Hammerson, a British one, and which until recently was listed on the FTSE 100. Comcast and 21st Century Fox,two American media firms, are battling over Sky, and whose headquarters are in...
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Source: economist.com