How to Identify Foreign-Owned Companies in Your Region

Official statistics can tell you how many foreign-owned businesses sit in your region. They can’t tell you which ones they are.

For an inward investment team, that’s the bit that matters. You can’t book a retention visit with a statistic. You can’t invite an aggregate count to a sector roundtable, or put a percentage in front of a mayor as evidence that a Japanese automotive group is expanding its footprint in your area.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes authoritative figures on foreign direct investment and on foreign-owned businesses by region, industry, and country of ownership. They’re the right starting point for context, but they’re published in aggregate, at a broad regional level, and refreshed roughly once a year.

Regional teams need something more specific: a named list of every foreign-owned business operating in their patch, and who ultimately owns each one. Retention visits, targeted business support, a credible evidence base, and awareness of National Security and Investment Act 2021 considerations all depend on it.

This guide walks through how to build that list: the definitions to get right, the data sources available, a six-step framework, what to put in your report, and the pitfalls that catch most teams out.

Why identify foreign-owned companies in your region

Foreign-owned businesses are a small share of any region’s business base, but they carry far more weight than their numbers suggest. The recent ONS Annual Business Survey data shows that 1.4% of businesses in the UK non-financial business economy were foreign-owned in 2021, yet they generated 29% of its approximate gross value added (GVA). Knowing who they are underpins several core responsibilities for regional teams.

Inward investment retention and expansion

Foreign-owned employers are prime relationship targets. Their investment decisions are often made in a boardroom in Tokyo, Frankfurt, or Chicago, where your region is competing against sites in other countries as well as other UK regions.

A named list lets your team prioritise account management, spot expansion opportunities early, and hear about consolidation risks before a closure announcement lands. Aftercare is far easier when you know who you’re caring for.

Regional economic profile and evidence base

Economic strategies, Local Growth Plans, Local Plans, and funding bids all rely on an accurate view of the local business base. Foreign ownership shapes much of it, from supply chains and skills demand to the region’s exposure to global shocks.

Company-level data turns a single line in an evidence base (‘X% of employment is in foreign-owned businesses’) into something you can interrogate and defend.

Investment attraction

The foreign parent groups already present in your region are your warmest leads. A group that has had a good experience in one UK location is more likely to choose it again for a second site or an R&D centre.

Mapping ultimate parents also shows which source countries are already well represented, and where there are gaps worth targeting in your inward investment marketing.

Skills and employment intelligence

In many regions, a handful of foreign-owned employers dominate specific sectors, from automotive and aerospace to life sciences and financial services. Knowing who they are helps skills teams, colleges, and universities align provision with the employers that drive demand.

National Security and Investment Act 2021 awareness

The National Security and Investment Act 2021 gives the government powers to scrutinise acquisitions that could harm national security. Acquisitions of entities carrying out specified activities in 17 sensitive areas of the economy, including AI, defence, energy, and quantum technologies, must be notified and approved before completion. 

Regional bodies don’t administer the regime, but they increasingly need to understand who owns the companies in their sensitive clusters, particularly where innovation funding, university spinouts, or public contracts are involved.

Post-Brexit ownership shift tracking

Since the UK left the European Union, the balance between EU and non-EU ownership has become a live policy question. Tracking whether your region’s foreign-owned base is shifting towards, say, US or Asian parents, and which companies are changing hands, needs company-level data. Annual totals won’t show it.

What ‘foreign-owned’ means

Before you build a list, you need a definition you can apply consistently. ‘Foreign-owned’ sounds simple, but a UK company’s immediate owner, its registered controllers, and its ultimate parent can sit in three different countries.

The ultimate parent test

The most useful definition for regional intelligence is based on the ultimate parent: the entity at the top of the ownership chain that controls the group and isn’t itself controlled by anyone else. If that entity is resident outside the UK, the company is foreign-owned.

This is important because multinationals rarely own UK subsidiaries directly. The ONS has shown that the United States, Ireland, and France all have higher ultimate than immediate foreign direct investment positions in the UK, meaning companies in those countries often control UK affiliates through holding companies elsewhere. Count by immediate owner and you’ll tend to overstate holding jurisdictions such as the Netherlands and Luxembourg, and understate the US.

Persons with Significant Control declarations and their limits

Since 2016, UK companies have had to declare their Persons with Significant Control (PSCs) to Companies House. A PSC is an individual or legal entity that meets one or more conditions, including holding more than 25% of shares or voting rights, or having the right to appoint or remove a majority of the board.

PSC data is the best public starting point for ownership analysis, but it was designed for transparency about control rather than for identifying the ultimate parent’s country. Where a company is owned by another company that keeps its own PSC register, it declares that company, not the entity at the top of the tree. For a primer, see our guide on how to check a company’s corporate structure.

Beneficial ownership versus registered ownership

Registered ownership is who appears on the share register. Beneficial ownership is who actually enjoys the economic benefit and control. They’re often the same, but trusts, nominee arrangements, and investment vehicles can separate the two.

For foreign ownership analysis, you care about control of the group, which usually means following corporate ownership up to the ultimate parent company rather than stopping at individual beneficial owners.

The intermediate UK holding company problem

This is one of the most common sources of error. Many foreign-owned UK operating companies are owned by a UK holding company, which is in turn owned by a foreign parent.

Look only at the operating company’s PSC entry and you’ll see a UK company as its controller, and classify it as domestically owned. The foreign parent may be one, two, or three layers further up, and every layer means another Companies House lookup.

Nominee shareholders and opacity

Nominee shareholders hold shares on behalf of someone else. They’re legitimate and common, particularly for listed and institutional investors, but they can obscure who’s really in control.

Opaque chains, such as those running through nominees, trusts, or jurisdictions with limited disclosure, are where ownership becomes hardest to read. They’re also where regional teams should be most careful before drawing conclusions.

ONS versus Companies House definitions

Official statistics and company registers don’t use the same lens:

• ONS foreign direct investment statistics follow international guidance and are presented on an immediate parent basis by default, with ultimate controlling parent analysis published separately.
• ONS business statistics, such as the Annual Business Survey, draw on the Inter-Departmental Business Register’s ownership markers and count businesses in aggregate.
• Companies House records legal entities and their declared PSCs, at the level of each individual company.

None of these is wrong; they answer different questions. Just be explicit about which definition you’re using, and don’t compare your own counts directly with ONS totals without explaining the difference.

The data sources for foreign-owned company identification

There’s no single public dataset that lists foreign-owned companies by region. Instead, you’ll be stitching together several sources, each with its own strengths and gaps.

Companies House PSC data

The PSC register is free, public, and available in bulk. For each company, it shows who has significant control, the nature of that control, and, for corporate PSCs, where that entity is registered.

Its limits are the ones we covered above: it stops at the first registrable entity, which is often a UK holding company, and it tells you nothing about where a company actually operates.

Confirmation statements and group structure filings

Confirmation statements record shareholder information, and annual accounts usually name the immediate and ultimate parent undertaking in the notes. That’s valuable, because it’s often the only place the ultimate parent is spelled out.

The catch is that it’s unstructured. Extracting parent names and countries from thousands of PDF accounts by hand isn’t realistic for most regional teams.

Register of Overseas Entities

The Register of Overseas Entities, held by Companies House, requires overseas entities that own UK land and property to identify their registrable beneficial owners.

It’s useful context for understanding foreign ownership of commercial property in your area. It’s a property register rather than a register of operating businesses, though, so it won’t identify foreign-owned employers on its own.

ONS aggregate statistics

The ONS publishes foreign-owned business counts, turnover, and approximate GVA by industry, size, and region through the Annual Business Survey, alongside its foreign direct investment bulletins.

These statistics provide useful context. A separate ONS experimental analysis, using a different method, found that just 1.1% of UK businesses were foreign-owned in 2018, yet they held 13% of total UK company assets. It also found that the North East had the highest proportion of its local units (individual business sites) under foreign ownership, at around 15%. The figures are aggregated, disclosure-controlled, and published with a lag, and they’ll never name a company.

Department for Business and Trade inward investment data

The Department for Business and Trade publishes annual inward investment results and case studies, and its regional teams work closely with local partners on specific projects.

This is valuable for tracking new projects and job creation, but it isn’t designed to be a complete inventory of every foreign-owned company already operating in a region.

Commercial company data platforms

Commercial platforms, including Beauhurst, join these public sources together. They link each entity in a corporate structure up to its ultimate parent and, with tools such as True Companies, consolidate a group’s legal entities into one profile. We cover how that works in practice at the end of this guide.

A framework for identifying foreign-owned companies at regional level

Whatever tools you use, the process follows the same six steps. Get each one right and you’ll end up with a list you can act on and defend.

Step 1: Define the geographic boundary

Start by agreeing exactly which area you’re analysing: a Combined Authority or Mayoral Combined Authority area, a single local authority, or a functional economic geography such as a travel-to-work area or a sector cluster.

Decide up front how you’ll treat companies at the edges. Will you include businesses registered elsewhere but with a trading site in your area? Most inward investment teams should, because that’s where the jobs are.

Step 2: Build the full company universe in the boundary

You can’t find the foreign-owned companies until you’ve found all the companies. Build a complete list of active businesses in your boundary, using registered addresses, head offices, and trading locations.

If you’re starting from scratch, our guide to mapping the full business base of your local authority area covers this step in detail.

Step 3: Trace ownership up to the ultimate parent, layer by layer

For each company, follow the ownership chain upwards. Check the PSC register; if the controller is a company, look up that company’s PSCs, and repeat until you reach an entity that isn’t controlled by anyone else. Cross-check against the parent undertaking disclosed in the annual accounts.

This is where manual approaches break down. A region with tens of thousands of companies may have several thousand corporate PSC chains to follow, and each can run through multiple jurisdictions.

Step 4: Classify by country of ultimate ownership

Once you’ve found the ultimate parent, record its country of residence. Then decide how you’ll group countries for reporting: individual countries for your largest source markets, plus groupings such as EU, rest of Europe, North America, and Asia-Pacific.

Flag the edge cases instead of forcing them into a category: minority foreign stakes, joint ventures, chains ending with individuals, and chains that pass through offshore jurisdictions but end back in the UK.

Step 5: Segment by sector, size, employment and contribution

Segmenting the list shows which foreign-owned employers matter most to your economy. Layer on industry classification, headcount, turnover, and GVA, and you’ll also see which sectors depend on them.

This is where a list becomes a prioritised account management plan. Beauhurst’s GVA data is calculated at company level, so contribution can be measured employer by employer.

Step 6: Refresh and monitor for ownership changes

Foreign ownership isn’t static. Acquisitions, divestments, restructures, and new arrivals change it throughout the year.

Set a regular refresh cycle (quarterly at a minimum for your priority accounts) and monitor for new PSC filings, acquisitions, and changes of parent undertaking. The aim is to hear about a change of ownership from your data, not from the local paper.

What to include in a foreign-owned company report

Once you’ve built your list, you’ll need to present it to your board, your mayor, central government, or partners. A strong foreign-owned company report covers seven areas.

Total count and share of the regional business base

Lead with the headline: how many foreign-owned companies operate in your area, and what share of the business base they represent. State your definition and boundary clearly so readers can compare it with ONS figures without confusion.

Distribution by country of ultimate ownership

Show which countries your foreign-owned companies ultimately answer to. A ranked chart of source countries, with the EU and non-EU split called out, quickly shows where your region’s international relationships are concentrated.

Distribution by sector and cluster

Break the list down by sector, using a classification that reflects your economic strategy’s priority clusters. This is often where the most useful insight sits: foreign ownership might be 5% of the business base overall but half the employment in a single advanced manufacturing cluster.

Employment and turnover contribution

Counts alone understate the importance of foreign-owned businesses, which tend to be larger and more productive than average. In 2021, 7.2% of foreign-owned businesses employed 250 people or more, compared with 0.2% of UK-owned businesses. Include total employment, turnover, and GVA in your report, and name the largest employers.

Recent inward investment moves

Highlight new arrivals and expansions over the reporting period: new sites, new subsidiaries, and acquisitions of local businesses by overseas groups. These are the success stories boards and ministers want to hear about.

Departures and consolidations

Be equally clear about losses: closures, site consolidations, and divestments to UK owners. Tracking these honestly strengthens your credibility and helps retention teams spot patterns early.

Comparative context versus neighbouring regions

Finally, benchmark your area against comparable Combined Authorities or neighbouring regions using the same method. A 7% foreign-owned share means little until you know whether the authority next door is at 4% or 12%, and a gap can support the case for investment where your region is under-represented.

Common pitfalls when identifying foreign-owned companies

Even experienced teams fall into the same traps. Here are the seven we see most often.

Missing the ultimate parent behind intermediate UK holding companies

Stopping at the first PSC entry is the most common mistake we see. If the controller is a UK company, keep going: as covered above, the foreign parent is often one or more layers up. Teams that skip this step will undercount foreign ownership, particularly among larger employers.

Nominee shareholder opacity

Where shares are held by nominees or trusts, the registered owner may say little about who’s really in control. Treat these cases as ‘unresolved’ instead of defaulting them to UK ownership, and check the parent undertaking disclosed in the accounts.

Miscounting complex multi-jurisdictional group structures

Large groups often hold UK operations through entities in the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Ireland, or other holding jurisdictions. Classify by the country where the chain ends, not where it passes through. Watch for round-tripping too: ONS analysis found that 19% of the assets of UK businesses with a foreign immediate owner were ultimately controlled from the UK, by UK companies investing through a foreign affiliate.

The opposite error happens too: counting each subsidiary of the same group as a separate foreign-owned company. Report at group level as well as entity level so one investor with five legal entities doesn’t look like five investors.

Confusing operating location with ownership country

A company that trades internationally, has an overseas head of sales, or has an international-sounding name isn’t necessarily foreign-owned. Equally, a thoroughly local-looking business may sit inside a global group. Classify on ownership evidence, never on impressions.

Boundary mismatches: registered address versus operating location

Many companies are registered at an accountant’s or head office address hundreds of miles from where they employ people. A factory in Sunderland may belong to a company registered in London. If you only use registered addresses, you’ll miss major employers in your area and count others that have no presence there.

As Basildon Council found, lumping a place in with a wider region can create a misleading picture, so precise geography matters.

Not tracking ownership changes over time

A list built once and filed away is out of date within months. Without monitoring, you’ll miss acquisitions of local businesses by overseas buyers and the exit of foreign parents, which are the moments that matter most for retention.

Over-relying on aggregate statistics

ONS statistics are the right tool for national and regional context. They’re the wrong tool for account management, case studies, or targeting. Use aggregates to set the scene, and company-level data to act on it.

How Beauhurst helps identify foreign-owned companies at regional level

Everything above can be done by hand. For a region with tens of thousands of companies, though, the manual route means weeks of Companies House lookups, and a list that’s out of date by the time it’s finished. Beauhurst turns it into a search.

Every UK private company in one dataset

Beauhurst offers complete coverage of every private company in the UK, plus Germany and Ireland. Our data combines Companies House filings with proprietary research, verified by our in-house analysts, so you start from a complete national universe.

Full PSC and group structure data on every company

Every company profile includes ownership and shareholder data, PSCs, and a Corporate Structure view. You can see the full hierarchy at a glance, from the operating company up through intermediate holding companies to the ultimate parent, with the company number, jurisdiction, and account consolidation status of each entity.

Ultimate parent country identification

Because Beauhurst links every entity in a group, you can see whether a company is UK-owned from the company’s profile, by clicking on the ‘Ownership’ tab. 

And with True Companies, multiple legal entities belonging to the same business are consolidated into one profile, with financials drawn from the most complete accounts across the group. 

Regional and local authority filters, using registered and operating addresses

Beauhurst records each company’s registered address, head office, and trading locations. Filter by local authority, or a custom area, and you’ll capture the foreign-owned employers operating in your patch as well as those registered there.

Sector filters for cluster-level analysis

Our industry classification covers more than 225 industries, alongside buzzwords for emerging areas that don’t fit neatly into standard codes. Combine them with ownership filters to see foreign ownership in your priority clusters, from advanced manufacturing to defence tech. That’s also useful context for National Security and Investment Act awareness.

Ownership change monitoring

Save your list of foreign-owned companies and track it. Beauhurst’s acquisitions data and live filings show you when a local company is bought by an overseas group, when a foreign parent sells up, or when a new overseas investor arrives, so your team can pick up the relationship early.

BeauhurstImpact: built for regional and government bodies

BeauhurstImpact is our platform for inward investment agencies, Combined Authorities, councils and local government, national government departments, and universities.

Teams use it to understand their local economy, target support, and report on impact, including the aftercare and account management work covered in this guide. At West Northamptonshire Council, the inward investment team now has a list of the top 100 companies in its area, with turnover and employee numbers, giving it a clear starting point for account management. At York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority, teams across the organisation use BeauhurstImpact for company due diligence and business support.

Aggregate statistics tell you how much of your economy is foreign-owned. Company-level data tells you who to call.

Skip any one of the six steps and your list will be incomplete, usually in ways that hide your biggest employers.

Done manually, it’s a major research project. With the right data, it’s a repeatable search your team can run whenever the board or a minister asks.

Want to see which foreign-owned companies are operating in your region? Book a demo of BeauhurstImpact and we’ll build the search with you.