Economy
Surrey is an affluent county with a service based economy closely tied to that of London. Surrey has the highest GDP per capita of any county in the UK and the highest cost of living in the UK outside of the capital. The county is said to have the highest proportion of millionaires in the UK. The average wage in Surrey is bolstered by the high number of residents who work in financial services.
Surrey has more organisation and company headquarters than any other county in the UK. Electronic giants Nikon, Whirlpool, Canon, Toshiba, Samsung and Philips are housed here. Kia Motors and Toyota UK also have HQs in Surrey, as do drug companies Pfizer and Sanofi-Aventis and oil giant Esso. Some of the largest FMCG multinationals in the world have their UK and/or European headquarters here, including Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Superdrug, Nestle, SC Johnson, Kimberly-Clark and Colgate-Palmolive. NGOs including WWF UK & Compassion in World Farming are also based here. Government Quangos such as SEEDA, SEERA and GOSE are headquartered in Guildford.
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Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“Unaware of the absurdity of it, we introduce our own petty household rules into the economy of the universe for which the life of generations, peoples, of entire planets, has no importance in relation to the general development.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them.... for really new ideas of any kind—no matter how ultimately profitable or otherwise successful some of them might prove to be—there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)