International investment

Abstract

So far in this book we have restricted ourselves to securities issued in sterling by a UK company, UK institution or the British government. This emphasis is misleading, as we saw in Chapter 1, since over half the market value of securities quoted on the UK Stock Exchange is made up of overseas securities, quoted in London but not necessarily in pounds and pence. For example, IBM shares are quoted in US dollars and Deutsche Bank shares in German deutschemarks. However, opportunities for overseas investment are not restricted to these securities. Investment can be made directly through overseas Stock Exchanges in such securities as US government bonds quoted on Wall Street or shares in Japanese companies quoted on the Tokyo Exchange.¹