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UK trade office happy to share investment facts

The UK attracts 70 percent of Taiwan's Europe-bound investment, an official from the British Trade and Cultural Office (BTCO) said yesterday.

"There are more than 200 Taiwanese companies with investments in the UK to date," Bob Manning, head of the office's inward investment team, said yesterday. "The UK attracts the most investment in Europe by far ? And a figure I am always happy to share is 70 percent of Taiwanese investment in Europe comes to the UK."

Manning was speaking at a joint conference organized by the BTCO and the Chinese National Association of Industry and Commerce (CNAIC, 工商協進會) to encourage more Taiwanese companies to invest in Britain.

The UK is the number one location in Europe for foreign direct investment, the UN Conference on Trade and Development reported last week. The UK won US$86.5 billion in extra investment last year over 2001, taking the total of inward investment to US$639 billion. The government's inward investment body, invest.uk, does not have separate figures for Taiwan's investment.

The country is the major European center of research and new technology in key areas like mobile telephones, digital television and the Internet.

The UK has many fans in Taiwan.

"The first reason to invest in the UK is that English is the global language of communication," said Theodore Huang (黃茂雄), CNAIC chairman and president of Teco Electric & Machinery Co (東元電機).

With many Taiwanese companies looking to move from contract manufacturing to developing their own brands and services, the UK is the ideal expansion gateway, he said.

Around 40 percent of households in the UK have digital television, according to government figures. This is an area of particular interest to Taiwanese companies that make the chips used to decode digital signals.

"We have a lot of people interested in developing chips in the UK for digital television hardware," said Athena Lin (林慧萍) of the Industrial Technology Research Institute.

The popularity of digital television in the UK is also attracting Tatung Co (大同), which sees new opportunities in flat-screen and large-screen plasma televisions.

"Our considerations are that we can gain access to the local market and, of course, the English language is very helpful,," said Tatung president Lin Wei-shan (林蔚山).

This will be Tatung's third investment in the UK. One venture with music group Decca fell through, and a US$500 million cathode ray tube monitor factory in Scotland operated by Tatung unit Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd (中華映管) closed at the end of last year.

As a supplier to other companies, Tatung was forced to follow its customers to China, Lin said.
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