The Economist has an interesting article on reactions to foreign investment in the United States. It seems that on the one hand, individual U.S. states are making concerted efforts to lure foreign investors. For example, officials from Alabama fly overseas to convince big manufacturers to set up shop in their state. On the other hand, many foreign takeovers seem to generate a great deal of nationalist sentiment. Witness the recent concern expressed over the Anheuser-Busch takeover by InBev.
Someone quoted in the article described the current environment regarding inward foreign invesment as "schizophrenic." But I'm not so sure that's the right characterization. Instead, there may be a simple distinction here. When foreign investment creates new jobs (e.g., when a foreign company builds a new factory), most people are happy about it. However, when foreign investors are simply buying existing assets, and therefore the number of jobs stays the same, or may even decline due to cost cutting, people are upset.
This leads me to a suggestion for future purchases of "sensitive" assets (apparently that includes beer): If you're going to be throwing around sums like $52 billion (the amount of the Anheuser-Busch deal), maybe promise to set aside a little bit of money for new job creation. It could help with the public relations aspects and, as a result, may even mean that the deal can go through for less money than it would otherwise take.
