Why aren't there any trillion dollar tech companies in the UK?

Question

I was reading the other day for my research on tech companies by impact and location, I know that the US has trillion dollar companies (mostly tech companies) in the near double digits and growing fast.Other locations for example the UK has top universities such as oxbridge, but I was very surprised to not see any trillion dollar companies from the UK, despite the rich computer science history the UK has.I don't think I've even seen any UK tech company that is over $100BN.Why is this? and what happened to the UK?

Anon826 · Accepted Answer

Successful UK companies don't manage to reach anywhere near that because the owners/shareholders usually get a juicy offer from non-UK buyer and prefer an easy payday rather than further developing their company/products internationally. There's too many successful food companies bought by US companies in the past 30 years, the latest being today Mars (USA) buying Hotel Chocolat (UK) for £534m.
In Europe the nationalism/laws in Germany and France is very high so it doesn't happen as often. That's why you see UK selling Rolls Royce (to German rival) and Jaguar and Land Rover to India. The opposite will never be allowed to happen. The UK politicians allow it to appease foreigner rich folk and hope they love Britian in return (they don't). Prime example is the sale of ARM in 2016.
If one reads Bloomberg/FT they regularly go on how UK public companies are a great buy given their shares are low but their dividend payouts high, but international investors do not invest for unknown reasons (because UK is regarded as a sh*ithole). So the current marketcaps of UK companies should in fact be much higher if they had the proper investment by international investors like they do to other countries.

johnny99k · Answer

Taxes. Tax laws take so much money from these companies, it's impossible to reach that amount. Like Sweden and Denmark, when a company wants to grow past a certain point, they leave the country and incorporate elsewhere.

mytailorisrich · Answer

Apparently there are currently 6 trillion dollar companies: Apple, Microsoft, Saudi Aramco, Alphabet, Amazon, and Nvidia.Based on that, I don't think anything special "happened" to the UK...

floxy · Answer

I'm always surprised by Tesla's valuation ($737B). TSMC is only worth a paltry $512B. British Petroleum and Shell Oil seem like they'd meet the requirements for >$100B UK company?https://companiesmarketcap.com/

Why aren't there any trillion dollar tech companies in the UK?

Taxes. Tax laws take so much money from these companies, it's impossible to reach that amount. Like Sweden and Denmark, when a company wants to grow past a certain point, they leave the country and incorporate elsewhere.

Apparently there are currently 6 trillion dollar companies: Apple, Microsoft, Saudi Aramco, Alphabet, Amazon, and Nvidia.
Based on that, I don't think anything special "happened" to the UK...

I'm always surprised by Tesla's valuation ($737B). TSMC is only worth a paltry $512B. British Petroleum and Shell Oil seem like they'd meet the requirements for >$100B UK company?
https://companiesmarketcap.com/