The UK’s biggest investors in R&D

Table 1 lists the 25 UK companies which invested the most in R&D in 2007. Two companies from the pharmaceuticals and biotechnology sector continued to dominate the list: GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca between them invested £5.8 billion, some 26% of the UK850 total. Since last year the amount spent by the two firms on R&D has increased from £5.5 billion and the proportion of the UK850 total has remained consistent. The biggest climbers in the Top 25 were Shire, Royal Bank of Scotland and BP. Amongst the foreign-owned UK companies in the list, Airbus was the largest investor in R&D (£397 million), despite a fall in its R&D. Ford dropped three places to ninth.

BAE Systems’ expenditure on R&D in 2007 is considerably less (£1,072m) than the figure quoted in last year’s Scoreboard and, indeed, in the years before then. This reflects the company’s restatement of its R&D spend to exclude that funded by its customers.

It should be noted that the UK850 compares the global operations of UK-owned firms and subsidiaries of major multinationals; some multinationals do not prepare consolidated accounts containing an R&D figure for their UK operations and are, therefore, omitted from the Scorecard despite carrying out substantial R&D. They may also be more subject to year-on-year variability of results based on changes in financial practice within their group (e.g. choosing to fund R&D locally or from head office).

Table 1: Top 25 UK companies by R&D expenditure (2007)

* - foreign owned firm

# - accounts not prepared using IFRS