I seem to recall that Boots is co-owned by private equity company KKR, hardly a British company, and a Mr Stefano Pessina, an Italian gentleman!

How many times have we heard the story about helping the economy, job security etc when a UK based and previously owned company is being taken over by foreign enterprise?.

In my neck of the woods, there were many well known companies that produced hosiery,footwear,engineering who merged, or were taken over by foreign or equity companies (possibly based abroad for tax incentives), and it did very little for the people or the economy, because those previous well known companies no longer exist in name or the UK. I could perhaps also add, that a number of these companies were taken over via special funding grants (for job security) that the government provided.

Fisons have just closed a large work site, which employed many hundreds of specialist technicians. The same applied to English Electric and quite a number of others. The work sites are now housing projects or due to become one. I suppose we could all work from a house or home?.

A couple of miles from where I live, a well known food company was bought out last year, with the promise of expansion and job security. Some people decided to take redundancy, others decided to stay on and help with the new owners ideas. Last week it was announced that redundancies would take place, and the new owners are only going to pay the minimum amount of redundancy pay. This in effect will leave those that remained, thousands of pounds out of pocket, compared to those that left earlier. But hey why worry, the bosses got what they wanted in the end, even though promises were made!.

And please don't get me on about the foreign companies that were allowed to take over our utility companies, and who are now holding the country and its people to ransom with ever increasing prices. Which according to our toothless watchdogs, the increase in prices are not necessary, which they are doing very little about redressing the issues being raised.

(Better go bed, before I make this into a real rant. But it does make me very annoyed when we hear about how we are or will benefit from these moves)

"In fact, the BBC's business editor Robert Peston says the deal could create a world manufacturing centre in Nottingham, potentially increasing the number of jobs."

Note in the comment the significant word could, how many times have we heard that ?

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Don't let it go to your head - I will try to have an argument if you prefer! One of the links seems to show what I thought - UK outward investment exceeds inward. See investment