The Ferrovial consortium's offer looks set to extend a long list of UK companies taken into foreign ownership over the past year.

Among the highest profile deals, P&O was bought in March by Dubai Ports World in a $6.8 billion (£3.9 billion) deal, while telecoms operator O2 was snapped up last year by Spanish firm Telefonica for £17.7 billion - the largest foreign takeover of a British company since France Telecom shelled out £31 billion for Orange in 2000. Further to the Spanish drive, Banco Santander Hispano swooped on Abbey National in a £9 billion deal in late 2004.

There has also been interest in London Stock Exchange from a number of foreign parties including Deutsche Boerse, the Australian bank Macquarie and Nasdaq.

Analysts have suggested the UK economy is particularly attractive to overseas investment as there are very few barriers preventing foreign firms from takeover approaches.

Britain has a distinctive lack of protectionism attitudes in comparison to the US and many European countries and has encouraged investment from abroad to help buoy share prices and help fund pension deficits.

While at the same time investment opportunities in the UK have attracted firms from countries like Iceland who have experienced market saturation in their home markets. Indeed, the Icelandic investment firm Baugur has, through its spate of UK takeovers, built an investment empire with an annual turnover that is bigger than the Icelandic economy at around £7.1 billion.

The fact that the time is ripe for foreign moves into the UK market was further demonstrated by figures released from the major law firms this week.

Profits at the "magic circle" leapt by as much as 25 per cent mainly on the back of the boom in overseas mergers and acquisitions.

But the traffic is not just one-way. Firms like Vodafone, BP and Tesco have been strengthening their overseas presence, while directories firm Yell Group is in the process of completing a £2.3 billion acquisition of the Spanish directories group Telefonica Publicidad e Informacion.

An air passenger group said the anticipated takeover of BAA could be a "good thing" for passengers.

But Simon Evans, chief executive of the Air Transport Users Committee, said it was "still too early" to tell whether Spanish consortium Ferrovial would provide better stewardship of BAA's seven UK airports than BAA itself.

Mr Evans added: "The Civil Aviation Authority has already said it will want anyone taking over from BAA to carry on with the BAA investment plans.

"Passengers see these plans as absolutely crucial. There's the opening of Terminal 5 in March 2008, the proposed expansion of Heathrow and the possibility of a new, third, runway in the middle of the next decade.

"There is also the plan to build a new runway at Stansted airport by around 2013."

Mr Evans said: "Any takeover of BAA could be a good thing for passengers but it's just too early to say whether Ferrovial will do a better job."