Businesses in Scotland: 2022

Ownership (registered businesses only)

This publication classifies registered private sector businesses according to ownership. They can be either ‘UK owned - Scotland based’, ‘UK owned - Rest of the UK (RUK) based’ or ‘Abroad-owned’.

Businesses with their ultimate base outside Scotland are either RUK based or Abroad-owned. As at March 2022, these businesses represented 3.3% of businesses. They also accounted for 35.6% of employment and 55.1% of turnover.

Between March 2021 and March 2022, the number of Abroad-owned businesses increased from 3,090 to 3,155. This meant that Abroad-owned businesses operating in Scotland again outnumbered RUK based businesses (Chart 5). There were 2,645 RUK based businesses as at March 2022. Abroad-owned businesses also provided more Scottish jobs than RUK based businesses.

Chart 5: Private sector jobs in Scotland, by business ownership, 2010 to 2022

As stated before, 35.6% of private sector employment was in businesses with their ultimate base outside Scotland. We can break this down further. 16.7% of Scottish private sector employment was in businesses with their ultimate base in the RUK. 18.9% of Scottish private sector employment was in Abroad-owned businesses. The share of employment in Abroad-owned businesses varies by industry sector. For example, 43.2% of ‘Information and communication’ employment was in Abroad-owned businesses. In comparison, 2.5% of ‘Real estate activities’ employment was in Abroad-owned businesses.

Chart 6: Share of employment by ownership and industry sector, as at March 2022

As at March 2022, there were 1,295 EU Abroad-owned businesses operating in Scotland. These businesses employed 130,330 people and generated a turnover of over £32 billion. This was 34.2% of all turnover from Abroad-owned registered businesses in Scotland.

We can also look at individual countries. USA-owned businesses accounted for the highest share of Scotland’s Abroad-owned businesses, employment and turnover. As at March 2022, there were 675 USA-owned businesses operating in Scotland. These businesses employed 100,170 people and generated a turnover of over £32 billion (34.2%).