We surrender! Whoever bids the most money can have the company. To Corus’s many employees: Thanks for your years of hard work and dedication, but we are turning over your destinies, and the destiny of British steelmaking, to a foreign corporation. We will not put up a fight, even though the rival steelmaker that will be taking you over is several times smaller than ourselves. And just to let you know, there is a strong possibility that your new owners will outsource your jobs once they obtain our more advanced steel-processing technology. Merry Christmas, and have a happy new year.

Over a hundred years of steelmaking in Britain is about to be turned over to foreign ownership, and nobody seems to care.

Corus Steel is one of Britain’s most important companies. Corus is Europe’s second-largest steel producer, employing 47,300 workers and producing 18.2 million tons of crude steel, primarily in the UK and the Netherlands. Corus Steel was created when British Steel (which produced a majority of Britain’s steel) bought out Netherlands-based steelmaker Koninklijke Hoogovens in 1999.

In October, Corus management embraced a takeover offer by India-based Tata Steel, a steel producer less than seven times Corus’s size.

Although Tata Steel is not even one of the top 50 steel producers, Corus management strangely sees no problem turning over control of the company. But that’s probably because Corus management, like many corporate managers, is more concerned about short-term gains for shareholders than about the well-being of the nation or its employees.

Tata does have one distinct characteristic, though, that should worry certain Britons: cheap labor. This helps make it the world’s lowest-cost producer. What would be Tata’s incentive to maintain steel plants, infrastructure and employees in Britain, when labor costs are a fraction in India? What Tata Steel is after, according to theGuardian, is access to Corus’s high-end steel technology.

If the takeover proceeds, it will be the largest foreign takeover by an Indian company ever, and will make the combined corporation the world’s fifth-largest steel producer.

Yet the takeover by Tata Steel is not completely sure. In a telling demonstration of Corus’s strategic value, within hours of Tata’s second bid on December 11, Brazilian steel manufacturer Companhia Siderurgica Nacional SA (csn) jumped in with another higher offer of its own. csn is also significantly smaller than Corus, but too benefits from cheap labor costs.

That is not to say that Corus itself is not an extremely profitable corporation. Corus operates Europe’s lowest-cost steel plant and has been especially profitable as steel prices have risen over the last couple of years.

2006 was definitely the year of mergers and acquisitions in Britain. Only the United States, a nation six times the UK’s size economically, had more takeovers. In total, 9.4 percent of global M&A took place in Britain, and almost a third of the hostile takeovers targeted British-owned enterprises.

British companies being taken over by foreign entities is becoming commonplace. Many of these sold-off jewels are of immense strategic importance. Companies like P&O, baa, Scottish Power, Thames Water, British Nuclear Fuels, boc Group, Pilkington, Marconi, and the Times are all no longer British-owned. Even the London Stock Exchange looks like it is about to be gobbled up.

Foreign investors are actively taking over these companies because they realize that these are the corporations that made Britain into Great Britain. Britain’s economy has been so successful because of the legacy built by these crown jewel corporations, not because allowing mass foreign takeovers somehow makes Britain’s economy great or dynamic as some people claim.

The fact that Britain has become so foreign-owned is a clear sign that the sun has set on Great Britain. The companies that made it great are gone, and so is its empire. Soon Britain will have to decide whether or not to give up its sovereignty to the European Union. If Britain chooses to leave the Union, how many of its companies—of which so many are now European—will be loyal to Britain?

To better appreciate the magnitude of Britain’s corporate sell-out, read “Selling Britain’s Corporate Crown Jewels.” To understand the most fundamental reason Britain has so quickly lost its status as a world superpower, read The United States and Britain in Prophecy.