Gnu, much as I respect your knowledge and opinions, I believe you've got this one wrong. What you're seeing as British business is actually international corporate business with global reach that happens to be headquartered in London because the City is still one of the world's largest financial services hubs. Britain still has a comparatively laissez-faire regulatory system, a legacy of those dear, dead days of Whig economic ideas and the heyday of the British Empire, so that's one of the places Big Money likes to settle.