ABSTRACT
By 1955, the value of the US foreign direct investment stake in manufacturing industry had reached the record figure of $6,322 million or 32.9 per cent of all that country’s foreign capital holdings. Of this amount, Canada claimed the largest share of $2,834 million, and the United Kingdom the second largest of $941 million, or 57.7 per cent of US manufacturing investments in Europe as a whole. Including trading, banking, public utility and mining interests, the total US investment stake in UK industry in 1955 was $1,420 million, or 7.2 per cent of all American overseas net assets.1 This proportion had remained remarkably constant since the first official census was taken in 1929. No data are available on other foreign direct investments in the UK in 1955 but in 1962, the first year in which the then UK Board of Trade published figures, US firms accounted for 64.1 per cent of the total inward capital stake and Continental European firms for 20.7 per cent.2
