What makes companies British?

"It is so British to let our firms become foreign," argues Tracy Corrigan with an eye to recent decisions by several British companies to shift their headquarters to Ireland for tax reasons. "What makes a company British has also become increasingly difficult to divine. ... None of the once reliable business markers - where a company pays tax; where shares are listed; where products are sold or where most staff are based - quite does the job any more. ... There is something very British about our willingness to accept the transformation of corporate Britain, without making, well, much of a fuss. The UK is more open than any other country to foreign takeovers. Since the start of the decade, UK businesses worth 1,200 billion dollars have been bought by foreign companies, compared with 500 billion dollars in Germany and less than 300 billion dollars in France."

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