Hello, Quartz Index readers!
The UK is “open for business.” This has been the British government’s catchphrase for years, and since the Brexit vote, the prime minister has been shouting it louder. It seems the message has been heard. Last year, foreign companies completed 227 mergers and acquisitions of UK companies, the most since 2011, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The shopping spree came to £187 billion ($227 billion), breaking records by a huge margin. The previous record was just £82 billion in 2007.
According to City University London’s M&A research center, the UK was the third most attractive country in the world to do deals last year, after the US and Netherlands. Naaguesh Appadu from the center said there were three key reasons for the jump in UK deals last year: The pound’s decline made the deals cheaper. Lower interest rates around the world made it easier to raise capital to fund purchases. And meanwhile, private equity firms were sitting on record amounts of capital that they needed to spend. —Eshe Nelson
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