The rivalry between British and French is well known and goes back to early medieval ages. A slice of it was witnessed on Tuesday when the visiting mayor of London, Boris Johnson, took a dig at the French minister Arnaud Montebourg's unwelcome comment on Indian businessman LN Mittal made a day earlier and said that Indian companies should avoid "persecution" in Paris and base their European operations in London instead.

On Monday, industrial recovery minister of France Arnaud Montebourg had said, "We don't want Mittal in France anymore because they haven't respected France… The trouble, isn't the furnaces in Florange, it's Mittal." India-born Lakshmi N Mittal, one of the world's richest people, is the chairman and CEO of ArcelorMittal.

Addressing a gathering at Ficci in New Delhi, Johnson said, “I have no hesitation or embarrassment in saying to everyone. Come to London, come to business capital of the world. Come and invest here. You won’t face any problem.”

“On a day when the sans-culottes (extreme revolutionaries) appear to have captured the government in Paris and a French minister has been so eccentric as to call for a massive Indian investor to depart from France, I have no hesitation or embarrassment in saying to everyone here 'venez a Londres, mes amis (come to London, my friends),” said Johnson.

The mayor said, “London's boundless opportunities, both as a vibrant international destination and a phenomenally well-connected business and investment hub, are ripe and plentiful – especially for surging emerging economies like India's.”

On the sidelines, Johnson told Governance Now “New Delhi has to build strong transport facility to cater for future needs.”

Observing that the Delhi air has become much cleaner than it was when the last time he came to the capital in 1996, Johnson also gave a word of advice for clean Yamuna. “Where there is need to build separate sewerage system is underneath the river to dump the waste,” he added. Fifty years after being declared biologically dead, the Thames river of London was cleaned a few years ago while the Delhi government has spent hundreds of crores on cleaning the river without any success in the project.