Does it hurt the UK economy when the United States buy all our good companies?

SneakySpectator

[Deleted User] said:

I'm actually willing to bet that by 2050 the top 10 UK companies will still be the ones that are currently top 10, give or take 1 or 2, because the US simply won't allow us to create a world changing market leading company because they'll just buy it before it reaches that stage. 

What a wild prediction  - the market today is completely different to that of 25yrs ago, as will the market be in 25yrs time.

Since 2000, we've had dot.com bubble and collapse, 9/11, wars in the middle East, GFC in 2008, a decade of  ZIRP, global pandemic, Brexit etc, etc.
In 2000 we had no Google, no Facebook, Apple were an oddball outlier, Arm Holdings were a penny stock, Nokia were giants. Investors weren't interested in AZN back then, it was just a boring blue chip.

The world (even UK) doesn't stand still. You think we won't see similar changes in the future?

I would suggest that you look East, I'm not convinced that US will be the main player forever...

25 years ago the largest UK companies were Shell, BP, HSBC, Unilever etc just as they still are today and unless we stop selling our new companies, that will never change. Revolut has a real chance at being a top 10 FTSE 100 company in the future but I am absolutely certain that an American company will buy them out. I am certain of this.

Maybe the US won't remain the main player forever, but definitely for the foreseeable future. China is the next big player but the west doesn't trust their tech and the government can't be trusted so until that changes, I suspect the US will remain king for many many decades to come. 

eskbanker

SneakySpectator said:
Revolut has a real chance at being a top 10 FTSE 100 company in the future but I am absolutely certain that an American company will buy them out. I am certain of this.

Are you twice as certain as you would have been if you'd only said so once?

[Deleted User]

SneakySpectator said:

[Deleted User] said:

I'm actually willing to bet that by 2050 the top 10 UK companies will still be the ones that are currently top 10, give or take 1 or 2, because the US simply won't allow us to create a world changing market leading company because they'll just buy it before it reaches that stage. 

What a wild prediction  - the market today is completely different to that of 25yrs ago, as will the market be in 25yrs time.

Since 2000, we've had dot.com bubble and collapse, 9/11, wars in the middle East, GFC in 2008, a decade of  ZIRP, global pandemic, Brexit etc, etc.
In 2000 we had no Google, no Facebook, Apple were an oddball outlier, Arm Holdings were a penny stock, Nokia were giants. Investors weren't interested in AZN back then, it was just a boring blue chip.

The world (even UK) doesn't stand still. You think we won't see similar changes in the future?

I would suggest that you look East, I'm not convinced that US will be the main player forever...

25 years ago the largest UK companies were Shell, BP, HSBC, Unilever etc just as they still are today and unless we stop selling our new companies, that will never change. Revolut has a real chance at being a top 10 FTSE 100 company in the future but I am absolutely certain that an American company will buy them out. I am certain of this.

Maybe the US won't remain the main player forever, but definitely for the foreseeable future. China is the next big player but the west doesn't trust their tech and the government can't be trusted so until that changes, I suspect the US will remain king for many many decades to come. 

Vodafone was the largest market cap in 2000, also the largest company in Europe, valued at around £147bn,
BP was around £120bn, HSBC was valued at less than £60bn (collapsing to less than £23bn during the GFC),
Shell £50bn, Unilever was a mere £16bn. Apple was worth less than $5bn

Perhaps read a little further than AI generated results on Google?

masonic

Maybe I'm missing something, but why is Revolut considered such a great company for the UK? As opposed to HSBC, for example?

SneakySpectator

[Deleted User] said:

SneakySpectator said:

[Deleted User] said:

I'm actually willing to bet that by 2050 the top 10 UK companies will still be the ones that are currently top 10, give or take 1 or 2, because the US simply won't allow us to create a world changing market leading company because they'll just buy it before it reaches that stage. 

What a wild prediction  - the market today is completely different to that of 25yrs ago, as will the market be in 25yrs time.

Since 2000, we've had dot.com bubble and collapse, 9/11, wars in the middle East, GFC in 2008, a decade of  ZIRP, global pandemic, Brexit etc, etc.
In 2000 we had no Google, no Facebook, Apple were an oddball outlier, Arm Holdings were a penny stock, Nokia were giants. Investors weren't interested in AZN back then, it was just a boring blue chip.

The world (even UK) doesn't stand still. You think we won't see similar changes in the future?

I would suggest that you look East, I'm not convinced that US will be the main player forever...

25 years ago the largest UK companies were Shell, BP, HSBC, Unilever etc just as they still are today and unless we stop selling our new companies, that will never change. Revolut has a real chance at being a top 10 FTSE 100 company in the future but I am absolutely certain that an American company will buy them out. I am certain of this.

Maybe the US won't remain the main player forever, but definitely for the foreseeable future. China is the next big player but the west doesn't trust their tech and the government can't be trusted so until that changes, I suspect the US will remain king for many many decades to come. 

Vodafone was the largest market cap in 2000, also the largest company in Europe, valued at around £147bn,
BP was around £120bn, HSBC was valued at less than £60bn (collapsing to less than £23bn during the GFC),
Shell £50bn, Unilever was a mere £16bn. Apple was worth less than $5bn

Perhaps read a little further than AI generated results on Google?

So what were the UK's largest market cap companies in 2000 because my search is showing the ones I mentioned. Obviously they had lower market caps relative to today but they were still the largest cap UK companies at the time.

kempiejon

True blue british business to a man.
Shell - RDSB, Royal Dutch Shell plc.
HSBC - The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited.
Unilever, a merger between UK soap boys Lever Brothers and Dutch margarine maker Unie.
I have invested in FTSE100 picks for decades but not for a specific UK bias becasue much of the income is from overseas. 

[Deleted User]

SneakySpectator said:

[Deleted User] said:

SneakySpectator said:

[Deleted User] said:

I'm actually willing to bet that by 2050 the top 10 UK companies will still be the ones that are currently top 10, give or take 1 or 2, because the US simply won't allow us to create a world changing market leading company because they'll just buy it before it reaches that stage. 

What a wild prediction  - the market today is completely different to that of 25yrs ago, as will the market be in 25yrs time.

Since 2000, we've had dot.com bubble and collapse, 9/11, wars in the middle East, GFC in 2008, a decade of  ZIRP, global pandemic, Brexit etc, etc.
In 2000 we had no Google, no Facebook, Apple were an oddball outlier, Arm Holdings were a penny stock, Nokia were giants. Investors weren't interested in AZN back then, it was just a boring blue chip.

The world (even UK) doesn't stand still. You think we won't see similar changes in the future?

I would suggest that you look East, I'm not convinced that US will be the main player forever...

25 years ago the largest UK companies were Shell, BP, HSBC, Unilever etc just as they still are today and unless we stop selling our new companies, that will never change. Revolut has a real chance at being a top 10 FTSE 100 company in the future but I am absolutely certain that an American company will buy them out. I am certain of this.

Maybe the US won't remain the main player forever, but definitely for the foreseeable future. China is the next big player but the west doesn't trust their tech and the government can't be trusted so until that changes, I suspect the US will remain king for many many decades to come. 

Vodafone was the largest market cap in 2000, also the largest company in Europe, valued at around £147bn,
BP was around £120bn, HSBC was valued at less than £60bn (collapsing to less than £23bn during the GFC),
Shell £50bn, Unilever was a mere £16bn. Apple was worth less than $5bn

Perhaps read a little further than AI generated results on Google?

So what were the UK's largest market cap companies in 2000 because my search is showing the ones I mentioned. Obviously they had lower market caps relative to today but they were still the largest cap UK companies at the time.

You might find this useful? We made a chart of the FTSE’s biggest companies and nearly lost our minds

Cus

Does it hurt the UK economy? Yes, overall it must. Does it mean that the average UK person therefore suffers in some unquantifiable way, must do. Does it impact UK shareholders/investors? Probably at a global index level it doesn't. 

All of us in the UK who have index tracker funds have so much of our money invested in big US corps and so we are partially responsible 

Linton

Talking about "our" companies is pretty meaningless now, at least as far as the largest ones are concerned.  For example:
-  HSBC's revenue on the UK is about 20% of its global total.  HSBCs UK employees represent about 1/6th of its global workforce.
 - Unilever's revenue from the UK is about 3% of its total 
 - More than half of all shares on the LSE are owned by overseas investors. 

One could see setting up small startup companies in the UK and selling them for large amounts of money to foreign owners generates useful foreign income just as much as exporting goods and services.

poseidon1

Regrettably what has been missed from this entire discourse and oddly glossed over by all governments over the last 30- 40 years, is the dire effect foreign and/ or private equity takeovers of listed UK companies and enterprises has on the UK corporation tax intake.

Below is a link to a tiny example of this, following the respective takeovers of Asda and Morrison supermarkets  -

https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2023/07/asda-morrisons-tax/

Losing £200 million in annual corporation tax from just two UK companies as soon as the ink dried on their respective takeover,  should have been cause for real concern for any government what ever their political affiliations.  

However, these were just  recent examples of a systemic and irreversible loss of corporation tax each time a UK  enterprise falls under a foreign/ private equity hammer, with billions in annual tax revenues evaporating into the ether by dint of unconscionable debt fueled acquisition strategies. The takeover of Cadbury in 2010 is a classic example of this per link below

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/cadbury-owner-mondelez-international-paid-no-uk-tax-since-ps11-5bn-takeover-in-2010-a6762421.html

There is also the egregious example of the takeover of one of the UK's few note worthy growth tech companies Arm Holdings - see link below. It  absorbed almost £100 million in UK tax payer funded RD tax credits, only for the opportunity to pay this back via taxes on future profits to be snatched away by the opportunistic Softbank 2016 takeover, with Arm  having since become a constituent of the NYSE for the benefit of its Japanese owner. Don't know about anyone else on this forum, but wouldn't it have been nice to have been able to by a share of what once was a British company occupying the same tech environment as Nvidia?

https://www.standard.co.uk/business/arms-ps100-million-tax-rebate-sparks-call-to-overhaul-uk-takeover-law-a3300116.html

So with fewer and fewer   'UK ' businesses directly contributing to the Exchequer, inevitably this
 must mean a greater burden  shouldered by the general population by way of personal and indirect taxes.  For those who  might feel so inclined, keep an eye on what eventually happens to Hargreaves Lansdown's future corporation tax payments ( £ 99 million in 2024 ) once its private equity takeover has been finalised

These are just a  small handful of examples which hopefully provides an altogether alternative ( but depressing ) dimension to the OP's question.