United Kingdom
In 2024, United Kingdom had a net international investment position of -5.7% of GDP, owning 496.0% abroad and owing 501.7%. Across the four instrument legs it reports in 2024, 36.0% is equity-like (direct investment and portfolio equity) and the remainder is portfolio debt and other investment.
The balance sheet through time
| Year | Net position | Assets | Liabilities | Reserves | Current account | Crisis |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1970 | 4.4% | 60.8% | 56.4% | 1.1% | 1.5% | |
| 1975 | 0.2% | 76.1% | 75.9% | 1.8% | -1.3% | banking, currency |
| 1980 | 5.0% | 89.3% | 84.3% | 3.4% | 1.1% | |
| 1985 | 17.5% | 158.5% | 140.9% | 2.4% | 0.6% | |
| 1990 | -2.9% | 144.6% | 147.5% | 3.0% | -3.2% | |
| 1995 | -2.2% | 178.4% | 180.7% | 3.1% | -1.0% | banking |
| 2000 | -7.5% | 283.3% | 290.9% | 2.8% | -1.8% | |
| 2005 | -7.4% | 406.4% | 413.8% | 2.1% | -2.0% | |
| 2010 | -7.5% | 644.2% | 651.7% | 3.4% | -2.8% | banking |
| 2015 | -15.2% | 494.8% | 510.1% | 4.7% | -4.9% | |
| 2020 | -10.3% | 650.7% | 661.0% | 6.0% | -3.0% | |
| 2024 | -5.7% | 496.0% | 501.7% | 4.1% | -2.2% |
Source: External Wealth of Nations (Lane & Milesi-Ferretti), 1970-2024 All figures as a share of GDP. Every fifth year shown, plus the first and last. Crisis column is the FinObservatory atlas, deduplicated across its five chronologies. Methodology
What it owes, and in what form
The composition of external liabilities. Direct investment and portfolio equity are equity-like: their value falls when the country does badly, so the foreign investor shares the loss. Portfolio debt and other investment (mostly cross-border bank lending) are fixed claims that do not.
| Year | Direct investment | Portfolio equity | Portfolio debt | Other investment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1980first | 12.4% | 2.2% | 3.3% | 82.1% |
| 2024latest | 21.0% | 15.0% | 16.7% | 47.3% |
Source: External Wealth of Nations (Lane & Milesi-Ferretti), 1970-2024 Each leg as a share of the four legs, which sum to 100 percent. EWN's total-liabilities aggregate also carries a financial-derivatives leg, left out here on both sides of the ratio, so these shares describe a smaller stock than reported total liabilities wherever that derivative leg is non-zero. First and latest year with a complete instrument split (45 years available). Methodology
Bilateral direct-investment positions
Where United Kingdom's direct-investment positions are located, and where inward positions come from. These are annual position stocks, not flows. The reported World observation supplies each total; the ranked counterpart rows describe its published geography and can be incomplete or confidential.
Outward direct investment
Positions abroad, grouped by the immediate destination economy.
Official reported World total
$2.31T2024
Top reported counterpart economies
| Economy | Position |
|---|---|
| United States USA | $705.53B |
| Netherlands NLD | $206.94B |
| Luxembourg LUX | $166.41B |
| France FRA | $117.02B |
| Hong Kong HKG | $109.22B |
| Spain ESP | $96.39B |
| Australia AUS | $67.99B |
| Canada CAN | $67.54B |
| Ireland IRL | $61.77B |
| Germany DEU | $56.60B |
Coverage in 2024: 149 named economies among 172 partner rows. Codes outside the shared country directory are not ranked: ATF, CCK, CXR, GX225, GX226, GX451, GX454, GX509, GX510, GX641, GX837, NFK, PCN, SGS, TKL, TX374, TX585, TX871, TX872, TX983, U005, U150, U202. G001 is the World total and is not ranked or added to the partner rows.
Inward direct investment
Positions in this economy, grouped by the immediate investor economy.
Official reported World total
$2.50T2024
Top reported counterpart economies
| Economy | Position |
|---|---|
| United States USA | $853.21B |
| Jersey JEY | $236.45B |
| Luxembourg LUX | $214.79B |
| Netherlands NLD | $212.38B |
| France FRA | $132.72B |
| Ireland IRL | $93.68B |
| Bermuda BMU | $92.39B |
| Japan JPN | $89.87B |
| Belgium BEL | $79.48B |
| Switzerland CHE | $68.60B |
Coverage in 2024: 185 named economies among 208 partner rows. Codes outside the shared country directory are not ranked: ATF, BES, CCK, CXR, GX225, GX226, GX451, GX454, GX509, GX510, GX641, GX837, NFK, SGS, TKL, TX374, TX585, TX871, TX872, TX983, U005, U150, U202. G001 is the World total and is not ranked or added to the partner rows.
Reported versus counterpart-derived
Official reported data (O) are the reporter economy's submission. Counterpart-derived data (SCC) are IMF staff calculations from counterpart submissions. They are alternative views of the same direction, not addends, so they are shown side by side and never summed.
| Direction | Official reported (O) | Counterpart-derived (SCC) |
|---|---|---|
| outward | $2.31T (2024) | $2.98T (2024) |
| inward | $2.50T (2024) | $3.55T (2024) |
Source: IMF Direct Investment Positions by Counterpart Economy Values are full US dollars, scaled only for display. Top 10 named economies shown. Methodology
Reading this page
The atlas records 25 distinct crisis episodes for United Kingdom since 1970. The crisis column marks them beside the balance sheet, and it is deliberately left to the reader to look. This page does not narrate a causal story about deteriorating positions and subsequent crises, because for most countries no such story survives inspection, and the cross-country table on the index shows why.
EWN is a reconstruction. Where a country never reported a position, the authors estimate it, and the file carries no flag separating a reported cell from an estimated one, so this page cannot mark them either.