Research and analysis

Methodological note for Greenfield foreign direct investment (FDI) 2003 to 2023

Published 26 February 2025

Methodological note

The data used in this analysis is downloaded through fDi Markets, from the Financial Times Ltd 2024. This is a subscribed database collecting and collating public data relating to cross-border investments.

fDi Markets only includes Greenfield Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), and so this analysis is concerned with Greenfield FDI only, a type of FDI where a foreign investor starts a new business by establishing a new entity, setting up new offices, building, production or operational facilities in the UK.

The following information is collected from the fDi Markets data dictionary and the Office for National Statistics’s (ONS’s) methods comparison of FDI estimates^{[footnote 1]} to outline the differences between ONS official estimates of FDI and these estimates from fDi Markets.

fDi Markets classifies Greenfield FDI as cross-border investment in a new physical project or expansion of an existing investment which creates new jobs and capital investment. Joint ventures are only included where they lead to a new physical operation. Mergers & acquisitions (M&A) and other equity investments are not tracked.

The data contained in this service is primarily based on publicly available sources, including:

• Financial Times newswires and internal information sources
• thousands of media sources, including all the world’s top business sources
• over 2,000 industry organisations and investment promotion agencies newswires
• data purchased from market research and publication companies

Each project identified is cross-referenced against multiple sources, with primary focus on direct company sources. This allows further company and project information to be captured, including decision making contacts.

As the data is collected primarily from publicly available sources, Financial Times Ltd takes no responsibility for the accuracy or otherwise of the data.

Each project is classified according to its cluster, sector, sub-sector, and business activity, based on a proprietary industry classification system. Each project is classified individually based on the activity at the site in question and as such, a company can have projects classified in multiple sectors.

fDi Markets builds its data based on a bottom-up approach from the activities of individual companies at a project level, tracking information on capital investment and job creation associated with an FDI project. If this information is not available, a proprietary algorithm estimates the jobs and investment. This means that it will be different to official statistics on FDI in the UK, like ONS statistics, who base their underlying analysis on surveys of foreign-owned companies in the UK and supplementary sources, using a top-down approach, covering cross-border financial investment positions and corresponding financial and income flows.

Official statistics do not include information on number of projects and jobs, and so for this reason, data from fDi Markets, the Department for Business and Trade’s (DBT’s) Inward Investment Statistics or other external sources may be preferred to obtain this information.

ONS estimates follow strict guidelines on what is included within the scope of FDI. ONS FDI estimates are narrowly defined as the direct investor controlling at least 10% of the voting power of the direct investment enterprise, whereas bottom-up estimates have a broader definition of FDI, sometimes tracking investments without information on the equity participation by investors. Due to the data sources used by the ONS, the estimates reflect all current inward relationships, whereas fDi Markets only captures new FDI activity.

Furthermore, ONS estimates include only investment and mergers and acquisitions where the financial transaction has been completed, and accounting for disinvestments. fDi Markets, however, also includes announced but incomplete investments. The data is collected in real time as announced by a company. This can sometimes overstate or understate headline FDI estimates as some deals may not be completed for a while or see completion at all. The data on fDi Markets is therefore subject to revision if deals fall through or as additional information is released on previous investment projects. Due to this fact, figures from the latest release of the Overview of Greenfield FDI publication should be used where possible. fDi Markets data also does not consider disinvestments and therefore can overstate headline FDI estimates.

The origin of investment is another source of difference. Official estimates allocate FDI to the country of the immediate parent company and the financial transaction between the company and the UK-based company but does not capture further funds raised by the UK-based company elsewhere. Alternatively, fDi Markets measure the source of FDI on a controlling parent company basis and capture all investments undertaken by that foreign-owned UK-based company, including domestically raised capital.

Another difference is how often FDI data is released. Official estimates are released on an annual basis, whereas data on fDi Markets is updated daily and in real time, allowing for the release of data for the current financial year. The use of publicly available sources allows fDi Markets to update data as and when any new information on a project is released. For this reason, it might be preferred to use data from fDi Markets or other external sources that release data in real time.

The final major difference in fDi Markets data to ONS statistics is the granularity of data in terms of sector/sub-sector/activity level due to fDi Markets bottom-up approach. This can allow for more bespoke analysis. However, this needs to be considered against the methods that the data is gathered by and the use of estimates for jobs and capital expenditure values where not publicly available.

Table 1 sets out a number of sources that provide data on UK inward FDI and their properties, as collected from ONS’s methods comparison of FDI estimates.

Table 1: UK Inward FDI Sources

	ONS	Financial Times – fDi Markets	Ernst & Young – The UK Attractiveness Survey	IBM – Global Locations Trends	Department for Business and Trade (DBT) – Inward Investment Results
Official Statistics Status	Yes	No	No	No	Yes
Methodological Approach	Top-down	Bottom-up	Bottom-up	Bottom-up	Bottom-up
Analysis Accessibility	Public	Public	Public	Public	Public
Data Accessibility	Public	Subscription	Not Available	Subscription	Public
Number of Projects/Jobs	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Coverage	Foreign investment of at least 10% of the ordinary shares or voting power, M&A	Greenfield	New projects	New and expansion projects	Greenfield, brownfield, M&A
Sources	The Foreign Direct Investment Survey, Bank of England, web-scraping	Publicly available sources	European Investment Monitor	Industry-specific sources, country-specific media, Investment Promotion Agencies.	Data from projects assisted by the DBT
Release Timelines	Annual	Report is annual but data is real-time	Report is annual but data is real-time	Annual	Annual

To carry out this analysis, we have mapped fDi Markets sub-sectors to the individual sectors set out in the ‘Selected sectors’ and the National Security and Investment (NSI) sectors. The tables below show what fDi Markets sub-sectors have been aggregated under each of the ‘Selected’ and NSI sectors. These are synthetic aggregations made by the authors and may differ from other sector mappings/aggregations made by other parts of UK government. This is not an official government position. The sub-sector selected on an FDI project in fDi Markets indicates what is being provided at the site of the FDI project. This is unique to each FDI project and while it is guided by the company involved, a company may have projects in multiple sectors.

As mentioned above, due to fDi Markets capturing announced but incomplete investments and collecting data in real time, data is subject to change when additional information on a previous investment is released. For this reason, since completing this analysis and the quality assurance process, some estimates may have slightly changed.

The data used for this analysis was originally downloaded in November 2024, whilst the data used for the quality assurance process was downloaded in December 2024. Due to the real-time data collection by fDi Markets, some data had been revised. If any changes were found, these were minimal and below 1% for all capital expenditure estimates, except for investments in Clean Energy Industries into the UK in the ‘Selected sectors’ (caused by revisions to the wind electric power sub-sector) and investments in Energy into the UK in the NSI sectors (caused by revisions to the wind electric power and other petroleum and coal products sub-sectors).

However, these changes were still minimal and unlikely to have significant impacts on the headline figures. Some projects and jobs estimates have also changed slightly due to these revisions. For this reason, all data in this note should be taken as an approximation. Some figures from last year’s publication may also be different due to these revisions, so only data from this release should be used.

Selected Sectors – fDi Markets sub-sectors aggregation and mapping

Advanced manufacturing

• general purpose machinery
• ventilation, heating, air conditioning, and commercial refrigeration equipment manufacturing
• power transmission equipment
• metalworking machinery
• plastics and rubber industry machinery
• food product machinery
• semiconductor machinery
• commercial and service industry machinery
• textile machinery
• sawmill and woodworking machinery
• other motor vehicle parts
• motor vehicle gasoline engines and engine parts
• motor vehicle electrical and electronic equipment
• motor vehicle seating and interior trim
• motor vehicle steering and suspension components
• motor vehicle body and trailers
• motor vehicle transmission and power train parts
• motor vehicle brake systems
• motor vehicle stamping
• motor vehicle and parts dealers (automotive components)
• machine shops, turned products, screws, nuts and bolts
• automobiles
• heavy duty trucks
• light trucks and utility vehicles
• motor vehicle and parts dealers (automotive original equipment manufacturer)
• all other transportation (automotive original equipment manufacturer)
• other (Business machines and equipment)
• tyres
• ships and boats
• motorcycle, bicycle, and parts
• railroad rolling stock
• all other transportation (non-automotive original equipment manufacturer)
• aircraft engines, other parts and auxiliary equipment
• aircraft
• other (aerospace)
• batteries

Clean energy industries

• solar electric power
• wind electric power
• biomass power
• other electric power generation (renewable energy)
• hydroelectric power
• geothermal electric power
• marine electric power
• engines and turbines
• other (engines and turbines)

Creative industries

• video games, applications and digital content
• motion picture and sound recording industries
• radio and TV broadcasting
• cable and other subscription programming
• communication, energy wires and cables
• audio and video equipment (electronic components)
• audio and video equipment (consumer electronics)
• museums, historical sites, and similar

Defence

• other (space and defence)
• military armoured vehicle, tank, and components
• guided missile and space vehicles

Digital and technologies

• software publishers, except video games
• custom computer programming services
• internet publishing and broadcasting and web search
• other (software and IT services)
• computer facilities management services
• other computer related services
• computer systems design services
• all other information services
• communications equipment
• data processing, hosting, and related services
• wireless telecommunication carriers
• wired telecommunication carriers
• navigational instruments
• other telecommunications
• satellite telecommunications
• magnetic and optical media

Financial services

• retail banking
• corporate and investment banking
• insurance
• investment management
• other (financial services)

Life sciences

• medicinal and botanical
• other (pharmaceuticals)
• other (medical devices)
• biological products (except diagnostic)
• in-vitro diagnostic substances
• other (biotechnology)

Professional and business services

• advertising, PR, and related
• professional, scientific and technical services
• employment services
• legal services
• business support services
• management consulting services
• other support services
• schools, colleges, universities, and professional schools
• business schools, computer and management training
• educational support services
• newspaper, periodical, book, and directory publishers
• environmental consulting services
• technical, trade and other schools
• specialised design services
• speciality trade contractors
• accounting, tax preparation, bookkeeping, and payroll services
• rental and leasing services
• architectural, engineering, and related services

NSI Sectors – fDi Markets sub-sectors aggregation and mapping

Advanced materials

• metalworking machinery
• semiconductor machinery
• textile machinery
• steel products
• other fabricated metal products
• alumina and aluminium production and processing
• gold ore and silver ore mining
• machine shops, turned products, screws, nuts and bolts
• nonferrous metal production and processing
• architectural and structured metals
• copper, nickel, lead, and zinc mining
• iron and steel mills and ferroalloy
• other (metals)
• spring and wire products
• other metal ore mining
• coating, engraving, heat treating, and allied activities
• forging and stamping
• iron ore mining
• foundries
• hardware
• support activities for mining and energy (metals)
• jewellery and silverware
• textiles and Textile Mills
• semiconductors and other electronic components
• other (semiconductors)
• other (ceramics and glass)

Communications

• internet publishing and broadcasting and web search
• all other information services
• communications equipment
• wireless telecommunication carriers
• wired telecommunication carriers
• radio and TV broadcasting
• other telecommunications
• navigational instruments
• communication and energy wires and cables
• audio and video equipment (electronic components)

Computing hardware

• computer systems design services
• computer facilities management services
• other computer related services

Cryptographic authentication

• retail banking

Data infrastructure

• software publishers, except video games
• custom computer programming services
• other (software and IT services)
• data processing, hosting, and related services
• magnetic and optical media
• computer and peripheral equipment

Defence

• other (space and defence)
• military armoured vehicle, tank, and components
• guided missile and space vehicles

Energy

• solar electric power
• wind electric power
• biomass power
• other electric power generation (renewable energy)
• hydroelectric power
• geothermal electric power
• marine electric power
• petroleum bulk stations and terminals
• pipeline transportation of natural gas
• pipeline transportation of crude oil
• oil and gas extraction
• other petroleum and coal products
• natural, liquefied and compressed gas
• support activities for mining and energy (coal, oil and gas)
• fossil fuel electric power
• other electric power generation (coal, oil and gas)
• petroleum refineries
• nuclear electric power generation
• coal mining
• gasoline stations
• engines and turbines
• other (engines and turbines)

Satellite and space technologies

• satellite telecommunications
• other (aerospace)

Suppliers to the emergency services

• medical equipment and supplies
• electromedical and electrotherapeutic apparatus
• other (medical devices)

Synthetic biology

• biological products (except diagnostic)
• in-vitro diagnostic substances
• other (biotechnology)

Transport

• freight and distribution services
• air transportation
• water transportation
• support activities for transportation

1. Office for National Statistics (2020). “Foreign Direct Investment: a methods comparison of ONS and externally produced estimates” ↩