Skip navigation

Home
About Us
Contact Us
Useful Websites
Welcome
Practical Advice
State Profiles
How We can help
Useful Contacts
Useful Websites
Products & Services
Archive
Print!Print article
UK Trade & Investment
Andrew Cahn

Building on
a special relationship

Andrew Cahn, Chief Executive of UK Trade & Investment, explains how his organisation can help companies in the UK and the US take advantage of the myriad investment opportunities that exist in both countries

US and UK companies are increasingly enjoying a special business relationship buoyed by long-established trading conditions and a shared history, culture and language. It is also helped by our commitment to supporting international business activities in an increasingly competitive commercial arena. The UK government, for example, is focused on providing an environment that offers commercial stability, fair and efficient regulation and support for innovation. This is reflected in the growing number of US firms who are investing in the UK.

For example, Allergan, a global specialist pharmaceutical and medical device company, is just one of the many healthcare companies which has recently chosen the UK as a location to centralise and expand its European operations. The company, headquartered in Irvine, California, has streamlined its Research and Development and select commercial activities throughout Europe into the UK, and as a result, has opened up a new location in Marlow in Buckinghamshire, demonstrating the growing belief that the UK is the natural base for European pharmaceutical and biotechnology operations.

We at UK Trade & Investment are making considerable efforts to attract further investment from the pharma sector, and we have worked closely with Allergan’s US management in the run up to its decision. Allergan has followed a similar move by Amgen, the world’s largest biotechnology company, with which its expanded UK operation will co-ordinate vital development programmes for products in areas such as cancer and osteoporosis. Google is a great example of how the UK is now attracting the world’s leading innovators in technology. The search engine has developed a sales and engineering resource in London, working closely with its European Headquarters in Dublin, Ireland.

Thanks to these and other moves, the UK has retained its position as Europe’s top foreign investment location according to the Ernst & Young European Investment Monitor (EIM). The UK was chosen for more European headquarters than any other of its continental competitors, attracting 136, compared to 30 for France and 19 for the Netherlands. The EIM also drew attention to the UK’s strength as a global R&D base, with the monitor showing it attracted 51 R&D projects in 2005 compared to 34 for France and 15 for Germany. The report concluded by saying that “the UK continues to offer a compelling case to companies wishing to gain a European foothold.”

UK Trade & Investment aims to ensure that this continues to be the case, and that UK companies can, in turn, find profitable investment opportunities in the US and elsewhere. As well as providing financial assistance to US and UK firms to support them in their investment endeavours, we can also offer the latest sectoral and market information and help them find the right partners. I am proud to say that no other government investment agency anywhere in the world has the breadth and depth of networks that we do.

Trade missions, supported by our expert teams at our offices across the US, continue to be a highly-important part of our activities. Nothing makes more of an impact than a face-to-face meeting, and so we regularly send out UK delegations to the US and welcome US missions to explore and discuss opportunities here. Thanks to a recent UK Trade & Investment-supported visit to Tennessee, for example, Dorset software firm Binary Logic, which set up just two years ago, has opened an office there and is also selling its products to some major US companies. All this helps to make the US-UK bilateral relationship a flourishing one.

The US is the leading overseas destination for UK investment, while the US is the largest investor in the UK. Indeed, as a proportion of total UK investment in the EU, the UK hosts as much as Germany, France, the Netherlands and Ireland combined. I’m confident that, with our help and encouragement, the business partnership between our two countries will continue to go from strength to strength. I wish you all every success in the year ahead.

Back to topTop