Saturday, January 13, 2024

Michael Lambert: Many Major Businesses and Prime London Property Now Owned by Foreigners

Jan 13, 2024 | Having discovered that a relatively empty shopping centre in Slough is owned by the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, I began looking at how foreign companies and individuals are buying up much of London's prime properties and businesses.

The tiny Middle Eastern country, Qatar, owns Harrods The Ritz Hotel, the Shard and Canary Wharf. Also, many famous department stores and hotels are foreign-owned.

Foreign nationals own thousands of prime properties in central London, often hiding behind companies in tax havens.

The extent of foreign ownership of so many prime properties and businesses is alarming.

London is well-known as the money-laundering capital of the world and little seems to be done to investigate the source of money used to buy properties. In five years just four ‘Unexplained Wealth Orders’ have been issued.

Many well-known brands such as Rolls Royce, Heathrow Airport and even Newcastle Brown Ale are now foreign-owned as are fifteen of the UK's premiership football clubs.

The railways, water companies, gas and electricity companies all have substantial and often majority foreign owners. Our 42 offshore windfarms are all foreign-owned as is the new Hinkley Point nuclear power station which is jointly owned by the French government and the Chinese.



This could be called ‘The Great British Jumble Sale’! We all know whom we can thank for this: it is none other than Madam Thatcher! She was the lady whom the Russians, then Soviets, called the “Iron Lady”. Having the characteristics of iron, or not, she certainly understood the processing of smelting and proceeded to turn the United Kingdom into a kind of smeltery, where all our precious assets could be smelted away for short-term monetary gain – smelted away by selling off the family silvers. As Harold Macmillan said: "The sale of assets is common with individuals and states when they run into financial difficulties. First, all the Georgian silver goes, and then all that nice furniture that used to be in the saloon. Then the Canalettos go." Macmillan got that right!

So, here we are today in this fine pickle: we Brits own almost nothing of value in this country anymore. As you rightly and so succinctly stated in this find video: all has been sold off to foreigners.

So, it beggars the question: What control was there to be won back through Brexit? Why did so many Brits get themselves worked up into a lather about Brussels having control over us? Fact, surely, is this: The person who wields control is the person who pays the piper! And in this case, it is those individuals, states and countries that are our paymasters that have total control over us Brits. No one or no country has control in life without ownership of assets. Without assets, one becomes a rule-taker, not a rule-maker.

So, thank you, Baroness Thatcher! You have done this nation proud. – © Mark Alexander