Business: What Ever Happened to the Molehills?

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One of the reasons for the improvement in Britain's balance of trade is the invasion of British business by U.S. businessmen. Few Britons would agree with that statement. But one who does—and is preaching it to anyone who will listen—is Joe Hyman, whose Viyella International Ltd. has grown into one of Britain's largest textile groups and most active exporters.

Hyman has gone so far as to make a statistical study of his own. From 1950 to 1966, according to Hyman's figures, U.S. firms have increased their British investments 600%, from $840 million to $5.6 billion. Today, some 1,650 companies owned or controlled by U.S. interests provide jobs for 500,000 Britons, account for 10% of all British industrial sales—and are responsible for as much as 18% of British exports. "There has been vociferous criticism of American enterprise seizing the so-called new 'commanding heights' of our economy," says Hyman. "I can only observe that had it not done so, such heights might only have been molehills. Without this investment we would be in a parlous state."

Hyman also argues that U.S. companies and Stateside banks, which presently hold 14% of all British deposits, act as a spur to make Britons perform better themselves. A hard-driving industrialist who makes all of Viyella's management decisions, he is particularly impressed by American marketing and productivity. "American businesses in Britain work back from the marketplace and simplify their plants," he says. "British businesses, through excessive product proliferation, are far less rational in their factories."

As far as Hyman is concerned, the British ought to take more lessons from the U.S. and try to restructure their business operations along American lines. So free with advice that other businessmen refer to him as "the professor," Hyman stoutly maintains that British socialism and nationalization are inconsistent. He says: "To compare the remuneration of the lowest-paid operatives in American automobile businesses in this country with their equivalents in our nationalized industries is to make it appear that we have two nations in our midst, while in reality it is the difference between two systems."