Alex Singleton | Journalist and political commentator

In 1994, the Hong Kong conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa launched the mobile phone brand Orange in the UK. The company’s previous entrance into the market with the Rabbit wireless phone had been a flop - the system required customers to be within 100 metres of a transmitter to get coverage. With Orange, Hutchison invested not just in the right technology but very heavily in marketing, hiring brand consultants Wolff Olins and agency WCRS to create the brand. By July 1997, the company had over 1m customers. “The future’s bright. The future’s orange” slogan had become an institution.

So what did Hutchison do? They sold the company; now it’s a wholly owned subsidiary of France Telecom. Then they set about creating another mobile phone network, called Three, and investing in non-European countries like India and Vietnam.

Both parties benefitted from these arrangements. France Telecom, which has considerable European interests, became a major player in the UK market and has been rebranding its operations globally under the Orange name. Meanwhile, Hutchison, received a huge bundle of cash and has been able to reinvest in developing markets, as well as in the UK.

The creation and sale of assets is an important part of global trade. Such voluntary sales only take place where both seller and buyer believe that they will benefit from the transaction. Some people worry when prestige assets are sold; that this will somehow be bad for a country. But as the case of Hutchison shows, we shouldn’t panic: assets are things that are created, and new ones can be created with the money earned from a sale. When an asset is sold to an overseas buyer, that’s an export.