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> Britain retains by far the biggest U.S. stake. It has $2.9 billion invested, mainly in petroleum (Royal Dutch/Shell), chemicals, textiles, insurance and a range of consumer items that includes Brown & Williamson's Viceroy cigarettes, Unilever's laundry products and Good Humor ice cream, and hot-selling Capitol Records, in which EMI Ltd. has a controlling interest. Current sterling-export restrictions are making expansion difficult but not impossible. Much as U.S. firms do in Europe, Bowater Paper went to U.S. capital markets for its share of a new $14 million newsprint plant that it is building jointly with the Newhouse newspaper chain.
> The Netherlands ranks second, with $1.4 billion, partly because of its shares in the Anglo-Dutch companies, Unilever and Shell. Following a trend toward joint venture, chemical-making DSM and PPG Industries (formerly Pittsburgh Plate Glass) are building a $20 million plant in Augusta, Ga., to make caprolactam, a nylon ingredient.
> Switzerland is third in investment ($949 million), but first in secrecy; its ministry of economic affairs regards attempts to measure the country's U.S. interests as "industrial spying." The Swiss stake, nonetheless, is growing. Nestle has increased its holding in Libby, Mc-Neill & Libby (food canning) from 20% to 35%. Alusuisse is building a $63 million aluminum-processing plant at Lake Charles, La., and Swiss watchmakers are buying heavily into Waltham, Elgin and other U.S. companies.
> West Germany, whose surprisingly small ($247 million) U.S. stake reflects a caution resulting from wartime confiscations, may become the biggest investor within the next decade. Hoechst, Bayer and BASF are leading a current surge of interest in manufacturing on American soil the chemical products that they now export to the U.S. The West German government, uneasy about its big trade surplus (TIME, Oct. 25), is strongly urging others to build abroad.
> France, showing a facile disregard of its own campaign against "Americanization" at home, dropped its stiff capital-export restrictions, and is rapidly increasing its $247 million U.S. interest. The latest in a new wave of ventures comes from Pechiney, which last month announced plans to build a $190 million aluminum smelter in Maryland with its own 46%-owned Howmet Corp.
> Sweden and Belgium also have sizable U.S. stakes ($217 million and $193 million), mostly in oil, glass, bearings, machinery and appliances.
One sign of the trend's strength is the arrival in the U.S. of European bankers similar to the march of U.S. banks into Europe during the 1950s. Within the past year, British, German, Dutch and Belgian investment and commercial bankers have considerably expanded operations in New York—the better to serve the growing European encampment.