Ministers have stopped asking if business deals are good for Britain

Inside Business: More deals like the £4bn takeover of defence firm Cobham by a US bidder are on the horizon

One major drag on Cobham has been its work on Boeing’s KC-46 tanker programme (Reuters)

There are so many bad things happening in Britain right now that the overseas takeover of yet another big British business, one that actually makes things and sells them overseas, seems barely to have been noticed.

Another reason is perhaps that Cobham, an aerospace and defence business that has agreed to a £4bn bid from American buyout firm Advent International, is hardly a household name.

It is perhaps best known as a pioneer of air to air refuelling tech, but it also supplies electronic and radar equipment to the civilian aerospace as well as the defence industry. Its kit can be found in just about every Airbus jet, for example.