The Great British Brands: Are They Still British?

You may be aware that some of the famous British brands are owned by someone else. Someone who’s located in a foreign country. Someone who is definitely not British.

It may be most obvious in auto. Rolls-Royce and MINI, for example, are owned by BMW. Range Rover and Land Rover are both owned by the Indian company Tata.

Now, how about the rest of them?

Methodology

1. Did a Google search on “British brands”
2. Came up with a list of 25
3. Figured out where the headquarters are
4. Created some snazzy graphs

Results

• As you can see, it’s basically half and half
• Not too surprisingly, the good ol’ US of A is the leader
• More surprisingly, is India, at second. In addition to the Rovers mentioned above, there’s also Tetley. This one makes a ton of sense, as India’s where most of the world’s tea comes from.
• Germany’s the only other country that has more than one
• The Netherlands actually comes in for half a credit, with Durex (condoms) being co-located in the two countries

• I’ve already talked about auto
• Food includes companies such as tea (3 companies) & candy (4)
• 1-offs include things like clothing (Burberry), financial (Barclays), insurance (Lloyds) & others

• One-offs are pretty much half and half
• Grocery (Sainsburys and Tesco) are just local brands (unlike, say, Aldi or Lidl, from Germany)
• Food & auto are about a third British

What’s really not covered here is the degree that foreigners own the premier British brands. For example, who even knew Skittles or Twix were British originally? At the same time, what could be more British than Rolls-Royce or Tetley?