Why Britain Can't Build a Trillion Dollar Giant
This week, a single American memory chip company became worth more than AstraZeneca, HSBC and Shell combined. So why has Britain never built one of its own?
Neil Woodford has spent more than 30 years as one of the largest shareholders in some of Britain's biggest companies. He was a top-five holder of GSK for over a decade. He helped see off Pfizer's bid for AstraZeneca. He's sat across from board after board, telling them what they had to do to be worth more. In this episode of The Noise Cancelling Podcast, he tells the story of how Britain keeps building world-class companies and then throws them away.
We cover:
🔹 Why scale isn't the answer (Taiwan built TSMC; South Korea built Samsung and SK Hynix, both worth over $1 trillion)
🔹 The corporate governance trap: why the average FTSE 100 CEO lasts under four years
🔹 BP's third chairman in three years, and what it tells you about UK boards
🔹 The Glaxo (GSK) story: more than fifteen years as a top shareholder, shouted down, sold in frustration in 2017, vindicated five years too late
🔹 AstraZeneca and the 2014 Pfizer bid at £55 — and what's happened to the share price since
🔹 The three things Neil looks for to separate businesses that compound from businesses that waste themselves
🔹 Why Simon Wolfson at Next is the gold standard of British corporate leadership
🔹 How Micron earned its place in Neil's AI picks and shovels thesis
🔹 Whether Britain can ever produce its own trillion dollar company
The Noise Cancelling Podcast is a weekly show with Neil Woodford and Jon Adair. Each week we take a piece of confusion in the financial press, teach the mechanism behind it, and give Neil's specific view on what it means for investors.
If you got something from this, please subscribe. It helps the channel more than you'd think. And leave a comment below with the British company you reckon should have been a global giant but never made it.
Important: Nothing in this video is investment advice. Companies are discussed for educational purposes only. You should consult a regulated financial adviser before making any investment decision.
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