Where have all the foreigners gone?

摘要

In recent years, Britain has done well at attracting foreign investment. Last year Invest.UK, the government's inward investment agency, recorded 869 incoming projects expected to create 71,000 jobs. But now the flow of investment seems to be drying up. In Scotland, Wales and the north of England, foreign direct investment (FDI) has replaced jobs lost in declining industries such as coal-mining and ship-building. In Scotland, 140,000 people, about 6% of the workforce, are employed by foreign-owned firms. While some of these jobs have come about through mergers and acquisitions of Scottish firms, most have been created by new investment.