Scotland vs Denmark: Global companies
wannabevc.wordpress.com
wannabevc.wordpress.com
Even when Scottish companies are not part of some giant multinational they are likely to have a head office in London. The reasons for this are obvious - London has things like a stock market.
You could probably make the same argument that this article proposes about most of the states in the USA. Companies might operate in loads of states, possibly all of them, and maybe have a brand image strongly associated to one of them. Yet they could be owned by some mega-corporation that probably only exists in somewhere like the Cayman Islands. Why doesn't Tennessee have any global companies? Same deal as Scotland, with the famous 'Jack Daniels' whiskey being made there but part of some company with headquarters elsewhere. Is 'Jack Daniels' from Tennessee and a global brand? Yes. But a 'global company', no.
Back to the article, in terms of pure GDP, Denmark is well ahead of Scotland. They have better housing stock, better provision for things like benefits for folk out of work, pensioners and those having children. There is a lot to recommend Denmark. In terms of what matters, having 'global companies' is way down the list as far as life in Scotland is concerned.
Maersk used to be a huge employer of Danish seamen and shipyard workers, for example, but by now all its Danish shipyards have closed, and its ships are not mainly staffed by Danes anymore either. Now its construction and shipping operations are almost exclusively outside of Denmark (largely in Asia), but it still contributes a huge pile of money to the Danish economy because the "office" and logistics side of its global operations are largely run out of Denmark. Carlsberg is somewhat similar: very little of it is brewed in Denmark anymore. The brewing is done in the Baltic countries, Poland, etc. But the business side of things is headquartered in Denmark.
In Scotland's case, it seems like they still do some of the manufacturing, but it's London that gets the HQs and the white-collar office jobs.
Sure, but part of the prosperity of the country is linked to having an economy that has resulted in such global companies. I don't want Scotland to have global companies for the sake of it, rather because I think it is an indicator (or delivers) prosperity.
We do have better hills though :-)
A couple of examples -
Clothing - Bawbags (http://www.bawbags.com/ - with their associated hurricane)
Brewing - Brewdog (http://www.brewdog.com/)