British Foreign Investment Research Articles

British Foreign Investment Policy Post-Brexit: Treaty Obligations vs. Bottom-Up Reforms

Although the competence to negotiate investment protection treaties was partially delegated to the EU with the Lisbon Treaty, Brexit is likely to put the competence back in the hands of Whitehall. This raises two questions. First, what should the British government do with its existing stock of bilateral investment treaties (BITs)? And second, how should the UK approach negotiation of new investment treaties? Answers to both questions require the government to carefully assess whether investment treaties provide considerable net benefits compared with other foreign investment policies. This is particularly important given the scarce bureaucratic resources and political capital available to pursue international economic policies post-Brexit. To help with this assessment, the government should consider undertaking two preliminary analyses before deciding on the course ahead: (i) a comparison of the protections offered under international investment law with those offered in UK law; and (ii) a comprehensive and carefully construed survey of British foreign investors regarding the role of investment treaties for their operations pre- and post-establishment. The latter task is particularly important in order to understand whether, and to what extent, investment treaties do in fact provide tangible benefits to a broad section of British outward investors compared with other initiatives to assist with the promotion and protection of foreign investment.

An Optimal World Portfolio on the Eve of World War I: Was There a Bias to Investing in the New World Rather Than in Europe?

The geographical distributions of French and British foreign investment portfolios differ markedly before World War I. Did French portfolios favor European investments just as British portfolios favored “New World” assets? Should economic rationality have encouraged investors to invest widely in the “New World” rather than in Europe? Combining Modern Portfolio Theory and a new data set comprising assets listed on the Paris and London Stock Exchanges, we show that investing in the “New World” did not yield higher returns than investing in Europe. The “European preference” of the Paris Bourse and, by extension, of French investors was not inefficient.

The twilight of the East India Company: the evolution of Anglo-Asian commerce and politics, 1790-1860

This book examines the development of British commercial, financial and political relations with India and the Far East during the final period of the East India Company's reign as the sovereign power in India. This was a most turbulent period for British commerce with India. The period began with the renewal of the East India Company's Charter and its component monopolies of trade with India and China, but this was quickly followed by the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars, which spread to the east and saw the completion of Britain's assertion of power over India and much of Southeast Asia. However, the war also strengthened those political forces in Britain campaigning against the Company's monopolies of trade with India and China, which were consequently abolished under the Charter Acts of 1813 and 1833. The spectacular growth of the British economy following industrialisation brought new forces to bear upon India, with the rise of manufactured exports to the east. But the course of commercial relations did not run smoothly, and economic crises in Britain and India in 1833 and 1848 swept away commercial firms in both countries, and caused severe economic retrenchments. This instability severely hampered efforts to facilitate the export of capital to India during the first half of the century. Finally the rebellion of 1857 spelt the death knell for the Company, and ushered in a new phase of Anglo-Indian economic relations, in which British foreign investment grew substantially. Anthony Webster is Head of the History Department at Liverpool John Moores University.

British Foreign Capital Issues, 1865–1894

In the half-century before 1914 international capital movements Played a significant role in the development of the world economy. This paper—which is a prelude to a more comprehensive study—focuses upon the British experience. We will first present new annual series on British foreign capital issues for the period 1865–1894. Our analysis of their behavior is centered about the following questions. First, how did the volume of British foreign investment fluctuate during the latter part of the nineteenth century? Were there long swings in these capital movements? Second, how did the geographic distribution of British foreign investment change over time? Was there an increasing tendency to invest within the British Empire? How was the total volume of investment apportioned between the tropics and the temperate regions of recent settlement? Third, how was British foreign investment allocated among economic sectors? Did the industrial composition vary significantly among countries, continents, and climatic-ethnic regions? Finally, what types of enterprises were nourished by British capital? How did the shares vary among government, private and mixed—government and private—undertakings? We believe that our time series provide more reliable answers to these questions than do previously available data.

Britain and American Railway Development

Our task here is to inquire into the relations between two familiar sets of phenomena—the economic development of the Western Hemisphere and the involvement of British investors, financiers, engineers, contractors, and financial groups in railways in that area. As a matter of convenience we shall look chiefly at the United States and Argentina, and at the time span of three quarters of a century preceding the First World War. It is no secret that during that period both countries underwent rapid development, whose contours included such matters as the effective occupation of new areas of vast extent; the growth of population, partly fed by immigration; the effective application of technological improvements to the exploitation of natural resources; an increasing complexity of the division of labor; and a rise in productivity and real income per capita, participated in by large segments of the population. During the same period, the Western Hemisphere was normally the outlet for from 40 to 60 per cent of British foreign investment, the United States and the Argentine being two of the countries chiefly affected. We are familiar with estimates that British investments in the United States, on the eve of the First World War, amounted to over 4 billion dollars, approximately 3 billion of which were in railway securities, and that something like half as much was invested in Argentina, with a somewhat smaller percentage directly in rails.

British Foreign Investments in 1930

British Foreign Investments in 1930

British Foreign Investments in 1929

British Foreign Investments in 1929

British Foreign Investments in 1928

British Foreign Investments in 1928

A New Study of British Foreign Investments

A New Study of British Foreign Investments

The War in Relation to British Foreign Investments

The War in Relation to British Foreign Investments