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GEaston · 10-06-2013, 07:15

What you don't touch on Stan is where this happens in reverse. The overseas companies that UK firms own. UK has always been one of the largest owners of overseas assets, and that continues to this day.

Royal Dutch Shell owns $271 billion of Foreign Assets
BP owns $244 billion of foreign assets
Vodaphone $224 billion of foreign assets

and so the list goes on (2010 numbers from the Office for National Statistics). Would you like to moan about that also ?

I'm sure there's Stanley equivalents overseas moaning about how the Brits own so much stuff. The Irish probably don't like that Guiness is a British Brand (Guiness is owned by Diageo - the worlds largest drinks manufacturer, which by the way is a British firm).

The real owners of overseas assets though are our banks:

HSBC owns $2,454 Billion of overseas assets
Barclays owns $2,322 Billion of overseas assets
RBS owns $2,262 Billion of overseas assets

so our top 3 banks (all top 10 global banks by size) own a staggering $7 trillion of overseas assets or enough to repay the entire UK national debt 5 times over.

So if our banks sneeze, that's a huge problem for the UK. Having such a large UK financial sector as we've all seen is in many ways unhealthy. However, when moaning about how "foreigners" are invading our shores and plundering our prized though mostly lossmaking nationalised industries the other part of the picture should also be considered - our ownership of johnny foreigner which is a large number.

Even with our broken banks the UK earns more on our investments abroad than foreigners earn from investments in us.

10-06-2013, 07:15	#12
GEaston Full Member Join Date: Mar 2013 Posts: 198 Liked: 46 times Rep Power: 64	Re: who owns what? What you don't touch on Stan is where this happens in reverse. The overseas companies that UK firms own. UK has always been one of the largest owners of overseas assets, and that continues to this day. Royal Dutch Shell owns $271 billion of Foreign Assets BP owns $244 billion of foreign assets Vodaphone $224 billion of foreign assets and so the list goes on (2010 numbers from the Office for National Statistics). Would you like to moan about that also ? I'm sure there's Stanley equivalents overseas moaning about how the Brits own so much stuff. The Irish probably don't like that Guiness is a British Brand (Guiness is owned by Diageo - the worlds largest drinks manufacturer, which by the way is a British firm). The real owners of overseas assets though are our banks: HSBC owns $2,454 Billion of overseas assets Barclays owns $2,322 Billion of overseas assets RBS owns $2,262 Billion of overseas assets so our top 3 banks (all top 10 global banks by size) own a staggering $7 trillion of overseas assets or enough to repay the entire UK national debt 5 times over. So if our banks sneeze, that's a huge problem for the UK. Having such a large UK financial sector as we've all seen is in many ways unhealthy. However, when moaning about how "foreigners" are invading our shores and plundering our prized though mostly lossmaking nationalised industries the other part of the picture should also be considered - our ownership of johnny foreigner which is a large number. Even with our broken banks the UK earns more on our investments abroad than foreigners earn from investments in us.