As they are each year, the dozens of British businesses honored with a 2001 Queen's Award for "outstanding achievement in international trade" are a mixed bag: exporters of heart valves, chemicals, aircraft-ejection seats, oilfield cranes, electronic gear, animal feed and such. Despite their diversity, each company's claim to the award a finely etched glass bowl is its success in selling its products overseas and thus contributing to the U.K.'s foreign-exchange coffers.
Among this year's winners is a small, London firm Asset Security Managers one of the biggest brokers in the booming kidnap-and-ransom industry...
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