Foreign ownership of UK listed shares has hit a record high of nearly 60%, The Times reports this morning.
Which means the ownership of such assets by UK pension funds and insurers is at an all-time low – or at least the lowest since anyone started counting.
You can look at this two ways. One is we’ve been engaged in a decades long experiment to sell England by the pound, a reckless flogging of the family silver not replicated by any other wealthy nation.
The second is that foreign investors seem to have rather more belief in our prospects than we do.
Last week a Saudi investment fund spent £2.4 billion on a 10% stake in Heathrow – yes, that annoying airport we can’t stand.
Yesterday Rocco Forte sold 49% of his luxury hotel group to the Saudi’s as part of a plan to double the size of the business in the next five years.
It’s a pity that funding wasn’t available from our own gigantic pension funds, but it wasn’t.
All of which makes worries about the Telegraph Media Group falling into foreign hands seem almost quaint.
If there was a fight to be had about UK assets remaining in UK ownership it was conceded decades ago, not least by the Telegraph, which was perfectly happy to see water, energy and telecom companies sold to deep-pocketed foreigners.
By far the most likely future for the Telegraph group is that it is led by RedBirdIMI, a firm run by former CNN man Jeff Zucker with Abu Dhabi backing.
Politicians, and Telegraph columnists, will carp for a bit, but it is done. That the columnists feel able to carp without fear of their jobs tells you that this is a business deal, not a political one.
If Abu Dhabi or the Saudis want to peddle influence with the Prime Minister of the UK they have no need to send crypted messages via a newspaper. They just phone him up.
As I say, if this were remotely a serious fight, we’d have got into it many years ago. We did not.
