Rarely has Britain been such a happy hunting ground for overseas marauders. 

The latest invader is £100billion San Francisco-based logistics giant Prologis, which has fired off a £12.6billion offer for Segro, the UK’s most highly valued listed real estate group.

If Prologis is eventually successful – it certainly has the resources – it will be the biggest FTSE 100 exit in a year when British firms have vanished into overseas or private equity ownership at a record pace.

There have been more bids and deals for them in the first half of 2026 than in the whole of last year.

For foreign buyers seeking a bit of the UK there could be no more propitious time for an assault.

Once again, Britain finds itself without a properly functioning Government.

It has been all but out of action for at least six weeks, according to the Chancellor’s entrepreneurship adviser Alex Depledge. It could now face six months more of indecision as Whitehall grasps Andy Burnham’s agenda.

Losing a real estate firm to the Americans might not seem of great strategic interest. But Segro, the former Slough Estates Group, is at the heart of the online and artificial intelligence (AI) revolution.

Logistics warehouses and data centres, to harness the enormous power of AI, are at the core of a 21st century industrial revolution every bit as critical as the railways of Victorian times.

A Labour government, which liked to boast of the inward investment by America’s tech giants, should be fearful that ownership of a vital bit of infrastructure will be heading overseas.

Segro, as an independent British company, could be at the forefront of that revolution. After the dismemberment of Arm Holdings, which has soared in value in New York, the nation cannot afford any more lost champions.

Predictably, Segro’s chairman Andy Harrison, a former chief executive of Easyjet (also under siege), has told Prologis to get lost, saying the Segro board ‘unanimously and unequivocally rejected the proposal’.

Anyone who followed the prolonged bid battle for laboratory testing group Intertek will know that accepting the first offer is a colossal mistake.

Prologis argues that its offer, to be satisfied in shares, is generous because it is at net asset value (NAV) at a time when similar deals have been done at a discount.

Maybe, but if it is worth NAV to the Americans seeking a bigger foothold in the UK and Europe, it ought to be worth even more to Segro shareholders.

As easy as it may now be for UK investors to own American stock – as we saw with SpaceX – it is not the same being a minority in an American giant with no chance of exercising any restraint on the fat-cattery which infects American business.

If there were a functioning Labour administration, I would urge intervention to stop the hare running.

One used to hope that the Competition and Markets Authority was an effective barrier against American tech imperialism. But with former Amazon boss Doug Gurr as chairman that is unlikely.

The rise of ‘Continuation Vehicles’ – the dumping ground for unsold companies bought by private equity – has long looked problematical.

Some 30,000 firms now sit in secondary funds and there were $108billion of such deals last year alone.

The practice under which the top buyout outfit sells firms to a new vehicle, which it controls, has always looked dodgy.

These vehicles allow the private equity giants to return cash to investors without selling assets at a deep discount.

The famously hands-off Trump-era Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has shown less interest in potential rule breaches than its predecessors.

Reuters reports the SEC is burrowing into possible conflicts of interests in continuation or secondary funds, the way transferred assets are valued and whether investor disclosures are sufficient and consistent.

The idea that investors in new funds bail out those in older funds is nothing new.

It was at the core of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi misdemeanours. At some point the music will stop playing.