China has bought up to $16b in Britain's top companies

China’s central bank has built up stakes worth up to US$16 billion in leading British companies, including household names such as Unilever and Tesco, the Sunday Telegraph reported. The People’s Bank of China and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) have bought stakes in at least half of the companies that constitute the FTSE 100, Britain’s index of leading blue-chip companies. The paper analyzed shareholder registers of about half of the companies in the FTSE 100 and found that almost all of them include China’s central bank as a shareholder. The investigation revealed that SAFE had invested at least US$6.2 billion in British companies, though the number is possibly much higher.