UK Foreign-Owned Businesses Generate £326.5 billion

Recently, the Office of National Statistics released a report titled Annual Business Survey: UK non-financial business economy foreign-owned businesses. The report revealed in 2015, there were just over two million registered non-financial businesses in the UK, of which just 1.1% (24,141) were owned by businesses outside of the UK (foreign-owned.)

Being the case, Turner Little decided to consider what percentage of the UK’s 10 biggest non-financial industries are foreign owned, compared to all UK-owned business.

It was discovered the manufacturing industry holds the highest number of foreign-owned business, at 2.9% (3,704.) Followed closely by the wholesale and retail trade (1.8%; 6,192) and the information and communication sector (1.5%; 2,848.)

However, despite such a small number of foreign-owned companies existing in the UK, collectively, non-financial foreign-owned industries contributed £326.5bn in approximate gross value added (aGVA) in 2015; a contribution of 28.5% to total aGVA in the UK.

(N.B. ‘aGVA’ is a productivity measure that tallies up the net value of goods and services produced.)

Furthermore, since 2008 aGVA for foreign-owned businesses increased by 32.1% from £247.1 billion, compared with an increase from UK-owned businesses of 23.9%. The largest contribution came from the non-financial services sector where the level of aGVA for foreign-owned businesses increased by 67.4% over the period.

London was revealed to be the region with the largest proportion of foreign-owned businesses in 2015, at 19.6% – contributing the highest proportion of foreign-owned aGVA, with 25.6% of the total. Europe was also highlighted an asset, the greatest contributor to foreign-owned businesses’, with 49.5% of the total.

Photo credit: xieyuliang/Shutterstock 

In fact, since 2008 aGVA from European-owned businesses increased by 42% compared with a rise of 12.8% from the next highest contributor, the Americas: businesses owned in Asia experienced growth of 93.6% over the same period.

James Turner, managing director of TurnerLittle.com, adds:

“As we face the post-Brexit free fall it is important to remember that, though foreign-owned business is performing exceptionally well in the UK; so too is British-owned business.

The sheer number of UK companies in comparison to foreign-owned companies proves we have the potential to harness power and production right here in the UK, to at the very least compete and safeguard our future – should we meet with dissipation.”