We’re backing Britain… the trailblazers pumping tens of BILLIONS into UK Plc

Despite recent market turmoil, companies in industry, from energy to filmmaking, are supporting Britain. Keeping the corporate tax rate at 19 percent — as Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng has done by scrapping a hike to 25 percent that his predecessor Rishi Sunak had planned — will unleash more than £5 billion in additional investment, according to think tank Adam Smith Institute.

It is part of a series of growth-enhancing measures, including new business zones and tax breaks for business investments.

Business confidence has been hit by uncertainty over Brexit and subsequently Covid. Business investment was at a record high of £224 billion in calendar year 2019, falling to £201 billion in 2020 and returning to £205 billion in 2021.

But the UK is an attractive destination for international businesses because of our excellent universities, legal system, ubiquity of the English language and skilled workforce. The pound’s weakness could make the UK even more attractive to foreign investors.

Here we look at some of the big names plowing billions of pounds of investment in the UK – even before the mini-budget – that they believe will create profits, growth and jobs.

Energy

From North Sea oil and gas to the burgeoning UK renewable energy industry, FTSE100 giants, including Shell, BP and SSE, have plans for billions of pounds to invest over the next decade.

Shell will plow in as much as £25 billion, most of it in green projects. BP plans to invest £18 billion in the UK’s energy system by the end of 2030. Renewables giant SSE can invest up to £24bn in energy security and decarbonising the electricity system.

SeAH Wind, a division of South Korean steelmaker SeAH, has received approval for a plan to build a £400 million factory on Teesside that will make offshore wind turbines and create 700 jobs.

This is part of £3.5bn of committed investment secured in the region under the ‘Freeport’ system unveiled by Boris Johnson and stepped up by Prime Minister Liz Truss.

Further licensing rounds for the North Sea could spark another burst of oil and gas activities. Norwegian oil and gas giant Equinor is considering an investment of billions of pounds in the Rosebank field in the North Sea, one of the largest and most lucrative new projects.

Technology

In the first three months of this year, UK tech companies alone have raised £12.4 billion in venture capital – second only to the US.

Apple and Google, already quite present here, have unveiled big plans to expand their UK outposts.

In addition to the new London headquarters in King’s Cross, Google is investing £871 million to purchase the Central St Giles development in Covent Garden, creating space for new staff.

Apple will open a new headquarters in the UK in early 2023, although it has not yet indicated its investment.

Amazon has invested £11.4 billion in 2021. It has not disclosed the full extent of its UK investment ambitions for this year and next.

However, the online shopping giant will hire 4,000 new employees in the UK in 2022, bringing its total workforce to 75,000. It has also established a major hub in the UK for Amazon Web Services, the company’s ‘Internet cloud’ business. It expects to spend more than £1.8 billion on building and operating data centers over the next two years.

The city

Kwarteng and Truss want to give financial services a boost by scrapping EU regulations that make it harder for major investors to support UK infrastructure projects. FTSE100 insurance company Phoenix says it could make it possible to invest between £40bn and £50bn over several years, much of it in the UK.

London was the top European city for investment by foreign companies in 2021, and so far in 2022. International accounting firm KPMG will hire a further 1,000 data scientists and engineers in the capital this year as part of plans for a new digital business. solutions. Another vote of confidence: US investment bank JPMorgan is set to double the workforce of fledgling British retail bank Chase to 2,000 within two years.

The bank reportedly has plans to move work from Germany to the UK over fears of power outages due to the war in Ukraine. Germany is more dependent than this country on Russian oil and gas.

Defense and space

A string of takeovers of leading UK aerospace and defense companies in recent years doesn’t mean the industry is lost.

Britain is leading the way in developing the Tempest programme, which is proposing a new sixth-generation fighter jet that can be equipped with lasers, fly unmanned aerial vehicles and use swarm technology that controls teams of drones.

BAE Systems, the UK’s largest defense company, is committing £900million over the next few years to the Tempest project, UK industry and the refurbishment of a ship assembly plant in Glasgow, Govan, where the Type builds 26 frigates.

US company Viasat has pledged to invest £300 million in the UK over a 10- to 15-year period if the £5.4 billion acquisition of British satellite communications company Inmarsat goes through.

Big Pharma

Global pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has invested in the UK, including in a new global research and development center that recently opened in Cambridge.

Rival GlaxoSmithKline, led by Emma Walmsley, is planning a £400 million science campus in Hertfordshire that could create 5,000 highly skilled jobs.

cars

Mining and mineral processing company Pensana is investing £150m to build a refinery at Saltend in East Yorkshire to produce crucial materials for the magnets used in electric cars.

Aston Martin is building a Formula 1 factory over the road from the historic Silverstone Grand Prix circuit in Northamptonshire.

Bentley has unveiled plans to build its first battery-powered electric vehicle in the UK, investing £2.5bn in sustainability initiatives over the next ten years. And Nissan is planning a £1 billion expansion in Sunderland, where it will build an electric car hub and create 1,650 new jobs.

Movie & TV

Growing demand for UK film and TV production facilities, which has attracted projects from Barbie to The Witcher, could see foreign investment reach £7.5 billion a year by 2025.

British Film Commission figures point to an increase of almost £3 billion in just four years as Amazon, Disney and Netflix move to the UK.

The UK industry already has a pipeline of streaming series, including Disney’s Loki and Star Wars: Andor, thanks to tax breaks and a weak pound. The development of studios in the UK has already skyrocketed, making the home countries the European equivalent of Hollywood.

Disney invests in Pinewood Studios, Buckinghamshire, where James Bond films are made.

Amazon has filmed the TV adaptation of The Lord Of The Rings in Hertfordshire. Sunset Studios, the producer of La La Land and Zoolander, is developing a £700 million complex in the same province.

Sky is building 28 acres of studios in Elstree, Berkshire, and by next year a £300 million complex in Dagenham will be London’s largest film and TV production campus.