ABSTRACT
This chapter will be mainly concerned with the scope, pattern and consequences of British participation in US manufacturing and extractive industries in 1960. It is based on data obtained by the author from UK parent companies and/or their US affiliates in the early 1960s. Information concerning the US investments of all British companies known to have a substantial interest in these fields was sought, and in all but seven cases – only two of which we believed to be significant omissions – it was readily granted. As our original list of firms was checked for coverage with official sources both in the UK and in the United States, the data compiled and presented here are believed to give a reasonably comprehensive picture of the role of UK enterprises in these particular sectors of the US economy. Moreover, since the investment by UK firms in the manufacturing and extractive sectors, taken together with that of British insurance companies, was thought to comprise between 85 per cent and 90 per cent of the total UK direct capital stake in the US in 1960, the overall picture can be calculated quite easily. The balance of the British stake in that year was made up of (a) land related investments – the more important of which can be traced without much difficulty – and (b) various sales and marketing outlets, which, though numerous, involved comparatively little capital.
