Some of the biggest names in the UK, including HSBC, Standard Chartered, Barclays Capital and engineering firm Wood Group, along with many others, who have been working towards, or currently have, business relationships with Libya, are having to reassess their exposure to the country, Jonathan Russell writes on http://www.telegraph.co.uk.

These UK companies had been scrabbling to secure their part of the estimated £1.5bn bilateral trade between Libya and the UK, and more importantly trying to grab a share of the £102bn of infrastructure investment the Government of Libya had committed to spend over the next two years.

He goes on to say that last year HSBC and Standard Chartered applied for the first two Libyan banking licences to be granted to foreign companies. They lost out to BNP Paribas and Unicredit but have maintained their interest in the country.

Along with Barclays Capital, Wood Group and a host of other well known names, such as lawyers SNR Denton and drug giant GlaxoSmithKline, they are among the 120 members of the Libyan British Business Council (LBBC) - an organisation set up to "build business bridges with Libya".

He writes that while the companies that have yet to establish a meaningful presence in Libya will be breathing a sigh of relief. For their counterparts which are in Libya, such as LBBC council member GSK things are not so easy. GSK has annual sales of £stg32m in the country, supported largely by local staff. As a supplier of medicine it is hard to see the company backing away from its commitment in the country.

Other companies such as accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young, both of which employ significant numbers of people in Tripoli, face a difficult period deciding what to do about their staff, especially the local ones that cannot be evacuated.

Then there are the numerous construction, engineering and architecture firms working on the ground. Water treatment firm MWH Global is currently working on Libya's Great Manmade River project, the largest underground network of pipes and wells in the world.

Consultancy group Capita Symonds has been working on the development of Benghazi's Benina International Airport – or it was until the runway was destroyed by bombing. Wisely the company evacuated all staff as soon as the troubles flared up.

The temptation to keep their operations running and be in place when the trouble calms down will be a strong one, Russell writes. Whatever emerges once the smoke and gunfire clears, Libya will still have huge oil reserves, an undeveloped economy and massive infrastructure projects that need fulfilling.