Transnational company (corporation)(TNK) - company(corporation), owning production units in several countries. And also a company whose foreign activities account for about 25-30% of its total volume and which has branches in two or more countries.

In foreign literature the following are highlighted: signs transnational corporations:

1. the company sells its products in more than one country;

2. its enterprises and branches are located in two or more countries;

On first stage Transnationalization of the activities of large industrial firms, they invested primarily in the raw materials industries of foreign countries, and also created their own distribution and sales divisions in them. The latter was caused not only by the fact that the creation of its own overseas distribution and sales divisions required significantly less investment than the creation of manufacturing enterprises abroad, but also by the possible negative impact of new production facilities on the ability to maintain an effective level of capacity utilization at the firm's home enterprises. This influence was especially strong in the production of identical or poorly differentiated products (for example, this factor restrained the growth of industrial investments by metallurgical firms, while firms in the food and other industries that produced products with certain trademarks were more willing to invest in the creation of manufacturing enterprises Abroad).

Second phase The evolution of the strategy of transnational corporations is associated with the strengthening of the role of foreign production divisions of transnational corporations and the integration of foreign production and sales operations. At the same time, foreign production branches specialized mainly in the production of products that were produced by parent companies at the previous stages of the production cycle. As demand differentiates and integration processes intensify in different regions of the world, production branches of transnational corporations are increasingly reoriented to produce products other than those produced by the parent company, and sales divisions are increasingly reoriented to serving emerging regional markets.

10. Transnationalization index and characteristics of leading TNCs based on it.

To identify transnational companies, there is a special transnationalization index. The transnationalization index is calculated using the following formula:

I T = 1/3 (A I /A + R I /R + S I /S) x 100%,

I T - transnationalization index, %; A I - foreign assets; A - total assets; R I is the volume of sales of goods and services by foreign branches; R - total sales of goods and services; S I - foreign state; S is the total number of employees of the company.

The transnationalization index of the world's 100 leading companies in 2008 averaged 57%. For some companies, especially from small and medium-sized countries, this figure was significantly higher. Thus, for the Swiss Nestle it was 93.5%

To classify corporations as transnational, the following criteria are usually used:

• · the number of countries in which the corporation operates (the minimum ranges from two to six or more countries);
• · a certain number of countries in which the corporation’s production facilities are located;
• · a certain amount of capitalization that the corporation has achieved;
• · a minimum share of foreign operations in the corporation's income or sales (usually 25%);
• · ownership of at least 25% of voting shares in three or more countries;
• · international composition of personnel and senior management of the corporation.

It is enough for a company to have at least one of the listed characteristics to fall into the category of transnational corporations. Some large companies have all these characteristics at the same time.

In the modern world, the line between transnational and ordinary corporations is quite arbitrary, since as the globalization of the economy develops, the internationalization of sales markets, production, and property occurs. Due to the fact that researchers use different quantitative criteria for identifying TNCs, the scientific literature provides very different data on the number of TNCs and the scale of their activities. Based on the scale of their activities, all TNCs are divided into large and small. The conditional criterion is the size of the annual turnover: for example, in the 1980s, only those that had an annual turnover of more than 1 billion dollars were classified as large TNCs. If small TNCs have on average 3-4 foreign branches, then for large TNCs their number is measured tens and even hundreds.

The variety of TNCs operating in the world can be classified according to a number of criteria. The main ones are: country of origin, industry focus, size, level of transnationalization. The practical significance of the classification of TNCs is that it allows one or another to more objectively assess the advantages and disadvantages of locating specific corporations in the host country.

Country of origin.

The country of origin of a TNC is determined by the nationality of the capital in its controlling stake and assets. As a rule, it coincides with the nationality of the country of origin of the parent company of the corporation. For TNCs in developed countries it is private capital. For TNCs in developing countries, a certain (sometimes significant) part of the capital structure may belong to the state. This is due to the fact that they were initially created on the basis of nationalized foreign property or state-owned enterprises. Their goal was not so much to penetrate the economies of other countries, but to create the basis for the development of national industry and the rise of the country's economy.

Industry focus.

The sectoral orientation of a TNC is determined by the main area of ​​its activity. On this basis, we distinguish between commodity-based TNCs, corporations operating in basic and secondary manufacturing industries, and industrial conglomerates. Currently, transnational corporations maintain their position in the basic sectors of the mining and manufacturing industries. These are areas of activity that require significant investment. In 2003, on the list of the world's 500 largest multinational corporations, 256 operated in such areas as electronics, computers, communications, food, beverages and tobacco, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, as well as commercial services, including on the Internet.

Transnational corporations carry out various types of research and development work abroad: adaptive, ranging from basic auxiliary processes to modification and improvement of imported technologies; innovative, related to the development of new products or processes for local, regional and global markets; technological monitoring carried out by a specially created division (department) in the branch that monitors the development of technologies in foreign markets and learns from leading innovative enterprises and clients. The choice of one or another type of R&D and their industry specialization depend on the region and level of development of the host country. For example, in Southeast Asia, innovative R&D related to computers and electronics predominates, in India - in the service sector (especially software), in Brazil and Mexico - in the production of chemicals and transport equipment.

For transnational corporations of the conglomerate type, in order to determine their specialization, they distinguish the so-called industry A, which the United Nations characterizes as having a significant amount of foreign assets, the largest number of foreign sales and the largest number of employees abroad. It is in this industry that the largest amount of corporate investment is directed, and it is this industry that generates the largest profit for the corporation. The basis for classifying a particular industry of a TNC as industry A is the calculation of index B - the transnationalization index for individual industries of the corporation. This index is recommended by UNCTAD (a body of the UN General Assembly).

The transnationalization index is calculated using the following formula:

In relation to TNCs as a whole, the economic meaning of this indicator is that it can be used to determine what role a particular TNC plays in the global economy. This is an integral indicator calculated as a percentage. Based on its value, one can determine and compare the activity of TNCs abroad and in the domestic market of the home country. As a rule, the higher the B index, the more diversified the activities of TNCs abroad. It is interesting to note that there is no direct relationship between the size of TNCs and the level of transnationalization. Moreover, small TNCs are often more transnational. According to UNCTAD, in a sample of 50 small and medium-sized TNCs, the transnationalization index was 50%.

The size of the transnational corporation.

A classification attribute that is determined according to the UNCTAD methodology by the size of their foreign assets. It is this parameter that underlies the diversification of TNCs into the largest, large, medium and small. Large TNCs include TNCs with assets over $10 billion. The vast majority of the total number of TNCs (over 90%) belong to medium and small corporations. According to the UN classification, these include companies with less than 500 employees in their country of residence. In practice, there are TNCs with a total number of employees of less than 50 people. The advantage of small TNCs is their ability to quickly adapt to changing market conditions. They can act in alliance with large TNCs, forming various kinds of concerns.

In the world literature on organization and management, distinctions are made between multinational, global, international and transnational companies themselves. The essence of these differences is presented in the table.

Table 1. Types and main characteristics of TNCs

In the age of globalization, the boundaries between countries have become much more blurred. And businessmen took advantage of this, fully aware that they could scatter their enterprise across many regions, thus saving part of the funds that they would have spent on paying for some factors of production in one territory.

This is exactly how transnational corporations appeared, the list of which is only growing every day. What are they and how do they differ from ordinary companies?

The basis of TNK

It is worth noting that TNC (this is how a transnational corporation is abbreviated) is the last stage of international cooperation of legal entities. Before this, the enterprise can be an open partnership or a limited liability company.

Another option is to create cartels - participants jointly regulate production volumes and the process of hiring workers.

The third method of international cooperation is syndicates, which imply coordinated actions in the purchase of raw materials and the sale of goods (from the total purchase of oil, one company can produce gasoline, and another rubber).

The fourth version of cooperation is a concern where only the management of financial activities is common, while the individuals themselves are constantly engaged in different types of activities (one branch of the company is engaged in sewing sportswear, and the other - military uniforms).

The trust companies that are closest in their characteristics to TNCs merge one of the areas of production, having common sales and finances in it (for example, joint production of aircraft engines and the constant production of instruments for aircraft by one side and passenger seats by the other). After the enterprise has experienced at least several similar cooperations, it can expand to the scale of a multinational corporation.

What is a TNC?

Before moving on to specific data, it is worth understanding what multinational corporations are. The list of their distinctive features is very long, but the main one is the presence of company capital in several countries around the world.

Despite the fact that enterprises of this scale are not located entirely in the territory of a certain country, they are still forced to obey the laws of the state where a specific branch of the corporation operates.

In addition, even state-owned enterprises can become part of a TNC, and the agreements that result in such cooperation can be both intergovernmental and private, between investors from different countries.

Variable ratings

Given the volatility of the market, it is very difficult to talk about any stable rating in which transnational corporations fall. The 2016 list differs in many positions from the 2015 list of leading companies, and the situation may change, although not globally, in 2017.

Of course, there are certain companies that, due to their fame and status, large market share, numerous trade and economic relations, can boast of a stable position in the list of the largest, but there are very few of them.

Stability in change

But despite the instability of the market, it is possible to identify certain features that unite the largest transnational corporations in the world. The list for 2016 and earlier years necessarily included:

• American companies: a third of them are in the top hundred;
• Japanese enterprises: the number of such international companies in this country is constantly growing, for example, in five years in the nineties, 8 new TNCs emerged in the Land of the Rising Sun;
• European companies: The Old World focuses on knowledge-intensive industries, actively working with pharmaceuticals and chemistry.

Separately, it is worth noting that the largest number of TNCs are concentrated in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries.

general information

US transnational corporations lead the global ranking of the most active and influential companies. The list contains in subsequent positions such countries as China, Japan, India, Germany, Russia, Great Britain, Brazil, France and Italy. In order to understand the scale of the power of TNCs, it should be said that their total value in 2013 was four times greater than global GDP.

The budget of some companies exceeds the budget of entire countries: for example, the sales volume of the world famous General Motors in the nineties exceeded the GDP of the Scandinavian countries, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia; Japanese Toyota earned twice as much money as the GDP of Morocco, Singapore and Egypt.

Of course, today the situation has changed a little: some of the regions have significantly increased their economic power, but at the same time, even now TNCs continue to exceed the GDP of developing countries with their capital.

Rating of TNCs by market value

But it's time to appreciate the true extent of power that multinational companies wield. The list of the largest companies by market value included (according to places):

• Apple (USA).
• Exxon Mobile (oil business, USA).
• Microsoft (USA).
• IMB (USA).
• Wall-Mart Store (the world's largest retail chain, USA).
• Chevron (energy, USA).
• General Electric (production of locomotives, power plants, gas turbines, aircraft engines, medical equipment, lighting equipment, USA).
• Google (USA).
• Berkshire Hathaway (investment and insurance, USA).
• AT&T Inc (telecommunications, AT&Inc).

An interesting fact is that Apple has remained in the lead for several years in a row, while the next positions are constantly changing. For example, since 2014, General Electric was able to rise from ninth to seventh place, Samsung was, in principle, ousted from this ranking.

As already mentioned, at the moment the leading TNCs in the world are American - this is clearly evident from the rating.

Rating by level of foreign assets

But we can also look at transnational corporations from the other side. The list of the world's largest companies by level of foreign assets (that is, the share of foreign countries in the company's capital) is as follows:

• General Electric (energy, USA).
• Vodafone Group Plc (telecommunications, UK).
• Royal Dutch/Shell Group (oil and gas sector, Netherlands/UK).
• British Petroleum Company Plc (oil and gas sector, UK).
• ExxonMobil (oil and gas sector, USA).
• Toyota Motor Corporation (automotive industry, Japan).
• Total (oil and gas sector, France).
• Electricite De France (housing and communal services, France).
• Ford Motor Company (automotive industry, USA).
• E.ON AG (housing and communal services, Germany).

Here the situation is slightly different from the ranking of the richest companies: the geography is much broader, and the areas of interest are different.

Russian TNCs

But do transnational corporations exist in Russia? The list of domestic companies of this scale is not very large, because in Eastern Europe TNCs are just beginning to develop, but even here there are already pioneers.

It is worth noting that Soviet enterprises, whose branches were scattered throughout the Soviet Union, were something like modern TNCs, so that some of them, maintaining their previous level, easily became transnational companies. Among the most famous such companies today:

• "Ingosstrakh" (finance).
• Aeroflot (air travel).
• Gazprom (oil and gas sector).
• Lukoil (fuel sector).
• "Alrosa" (mining sector, diamond mining).

According to experts, Russian oil and gas companies have the greatest potential, which, due to their availability of resources, can easily compete with world leaders in this industry, selling them raw materials and allowing them to extract resources from their own wells. It is worth noting that many global TNCs have their branches on the territory of the Russian Federation.

Fuel TNCs

According to Russian experts, the most promising ones are fuel transnational corporations. List of leaders in this field:

• Exxon Mobil (USA).
• PetroChina (China).
• Petrobras (Brazil).
• Royal Dutch Shell (UK).
• Chevron (USA).
• Gazprom (Russia).
• Total (France).
• BP (UK).
• ConocoPhillips (USA).
• CN00C (Hong Kong).

The presence of a Russian company among the world's largest TNCs definitely increases the likelihood of other corporations, such as Transneft, for example, moving to this level, which is already one of the richest companies in the world, although it has not yet reached the international level.

Difficulties of TNCs

But is everything so smooth with TNCs? Yes, expanding their target markets allows them to receive maximum profit from the sales of their products, but at the same time, isn’t such dispersion their weakness? What challenges do multinational companies face?

The list of these obstacles is huge, ranging from constant competition with local manufacturers who know their market much better, to political games, due to which a product, seemingly already adapted for a certain country, cannot reach store shelves.

TNCs in new markets face a lack of local specialists (lack of suitable qualifications among potential personnel), as well as their high wage requirements with productivity equal to other regions.

No one has canceled the policy of the state, which can oblige a transnational company to pay huge taxes on profits or ban some kind of production in a particular region: representatives of TNCs coming to Russia, for example, note that due to bureaucracy, the opening of branches is delayed for many years. month.

Thus, even the powers that be, in the form of TNCs, in this case, have certain problems; one should not think that their power opens all the doors for them.

Development prospects

Well, what development prospects do the world's transnational corporations have? The list of their spheres of influence, as has already been mentioned many times, is truly enormous. About half of industrial production, almost 70% of trade, almost 85% of inventions and 90% of foreign investments depend on them.

Trade in raw materials belongs to TNCs: under their authority is the purchase and sale of wheat (90%), coffee (90%), corn (90%), tobacco (90%), iron ore (90%), copper (85%), bauxite ( 85%) and bananas (80%).

In addition, in America, more than half of export-related operations are controlled by TNCs; in the UK, the number of such operations is 80%; in Singapore, which was basically built with money from foreign investors, it is 90%. 30% of world trade is directly or indirectly related to the activities of TNCs.

And in the future, with the development of globalization, the power of transnational corporations will only increase.

Despite all sorts of difficulties, they are not going to give up on expanding into new territories, and there are still a lot of markets where not all possible space belongs to TNC products.

Therefore, the only thing that now remains for most states targeted by TNCs is either to assist them, receiving a certain profit from the arrival of a new entrepreneur in the country, or to defend themselves by introducing a policy of protectionism, thereby possibly causing discontent among citizens who will be forced to purchase the products of transnational companies. corporations in other markets.

Conclusion

It is impossible to deny the enormous role of transnational corporations in the global market. The list of spheres of their influence, projects in which they take part, and markets available to them is truly enormous..

But still, it is impossible to say unequivocally that the future belongs to them - the competition from the national manufacturer is too strong. Yes, a modern economy without TNCs will not exist in the form in which it exists today, but at the same time it will not completely succumb to them.

In the context of globalization, a significant part of the world's goods and services is produced by enterprises controlled by foreign companies. Companies that organize cross-border value chains (global value chains - see 2.2) through foreign direct investment (FDI) are usually called transnational corporations (TNCs). The most authoritative international organization for the study of FDI and TNCs, UNCTAD, classifies such corporations as companies of any legal form (that is, not always corporations) that own at least 10% of shares (equity participation) in firms (enterprises) that are located in two and more countries.

Indicators of transnationalization of the world and national economy

According to UNCTAD, in 2012, the world's accumulated FDI stock reached 23 trillion. dollars, and the assets they controlled, including the assets of local partners involved in foreign branches, were even larger and were estimated by experts at more than 86 trillion. dollars. The sales volume of foreign branches of TNCs amounted to approximately 26 trillion. dollars, the volume of added value produced by these branches exceeded 9% of world GDP, and their exports were estimated at 7.5 billion dollars, accounting for a third of all world trade. The foreign branches of TNCs employ about 72 million people, which is not too much - 2% of the economically active population of the world, since FDI, even in labor-intensive industries, is usually represented by more highly productive enterprises compared to national competing companies.

When considering the contribution of TNCs to the world economy, their special importance is usually emphasized in the transfer of knowledge through the training of local personnel and the introduction of local entrepreneurs to new technologies and management methods. For many countries, FDI represents a valuable source of capital that does not actually have to be repaid, unlike borrowed funds.

Ultimately, TNCs are actively participating in the modernization of the global economy. However, in a number of less developed countries, the activities of TNCs are perceived ambiguously, incl. their negative attitude towards local corruption (although this does not prevent foreign investors from adapting to it), but especially their practice of transfer prices, in particular, undervaluing exported products to save on export duties.

Individual countries are involved in outward FDI in different ways (in Russian statistics, the term FDI is used for exported direct investment - foreign direct investment). It is dominated by developed countries (see Table 1), especially Western European ones - in several small European countries the scale of the national economy is comparable to the foreign production of goods and services controlled from their territory, although this control is often exercised not by their own, but by those operating on their territory foreign TNCs. Of the large countries, the United Kingdom continues to hold the lead after the United States. Less developed countries have developed many of their own TNCs in recent decades, especially China, although Russia is not too far behind it. Special attention should be paid to offshore companies (see 11.1), which are large exporters of FDI largely due to “round-tripping investnent”, i.e. those who return to their countries from offshores, having acquired foreign jurisdiction there and saving on taxes.

Table 1
Export and volume of accumulated exported foreign direct investment in the world

*Grade

Imports of FDI, as well as exports, are dominated by developed countries, especially EU member states (see Table 2). In essence, TNCs have ensured here informal corporate integration along with formal integration at the state level, cementing the structures created by politicians through cross-border production ties of TNCs. This is important to take into account within the framework of post-Soviet integration, where mutual FDI is not yet very large, although it is growing rapidly - it accounts for less than 7% of all FDI within the CIS.

table 2
Import and volume of accumulated imported foreign direct investment in the world

*Grade
Source: UNCTAD. World Investment Report. New York and Geneva.2013.R. 213-220.

When assessing the foreign activity of TNCs, the transnationalization index is popular. It is calculated as the average of three indicators: the share of foreign assets in the total assets of a TNC, the share of sales abroad in the total revenue of this company, and the share of foreign personnel in the total number of employees of this TNC. However, it is necessary to take into account that the highest indices are observed among TNCs of small countries, where successful firms very quickly outgrow the boundaries of the domestic market (see Table 3).

Table 3
Home countries of the world's 100 leading non-financial TNCs in 2012

Source: UNCTAD. World Investment Report. New York and Geneva. 2012.

There are tens of thousands of different TNCs in the world, for which it is impossible to develop a universal classification. However, some types can be distinguished.

Types of TNCs

TNCs are divided into global and regional. The latter limit their foreign expansion to one or two regions where they have more comfortable conditions for doing business due to territorial proximity, absence of language barriers, ethnocultural homogeneity, similarity of the institutional environment, etc. The most common are those regional TNCs whose FDI is limited to the territory of one regional integration group, for example, the EU. Regional TNCs also include large firms in the early stages of internationalization, for example, most Russian TNCs.

Traditionally, TNCs internationalize their business in stages - having gained a foothold in domestic markets, they then begin foreign trade activities, which over time are supplemented by FDI, the geography of which they also gradually expand. But recently, especially in modern service industries, more and more companies are appearing that become transnational “from birth.” This is explained by the fact that it is not the company that acquires experience in foreign economic activity, but the people representing it (owners, hired managers), and in the context of globalization, new companies are often founded by specialists who have already gained such experience in other TNCs.

A typology based on the nationality of TNCs is also widespread, but it often encounters difficulties. An example would be multinational companies that are formed through a complete merger of national companies (a classic example is the Dutch-British Unilever). In addition, some TNCs become the property of foreign investors, including portfolio investors (for example, the Finnish Nokia). All this can lead to the phenomenon of TNC migrants (in particular, ArcelorMittal, owned by Indian entrepreneur L. Mittal, is now considered a European company). As a rule, the “nationality” of such TNCs is determined by the country where the main decisions are made, i.e. where the actual headquarter is located).

Strategy and structure of TNCs

What are the main motives for direct investment abroad for TNCs? According to the eclectic model of FDI (see 30.3), there are four main groups of motives:

1. expansion (capture, retention) of foreign markets;
2. increasing the efficiency of production of goods and services by creating foreign branches (through reducing costs, primarily labor and tax);
3. ensuring access to foreign resources (raw materials, qualified specialists, infrastructure);
4. addition of assets that are fundamentally new for the company (in particular, companies with R&D departments that ensure the development of new technologies).

Sometimes these motives are combined. There may also be more specific motives for FDI. For example, entrepreneurs from less developed countries often use foreign assets to insure against losses in the event of possible confiscation of their business in their home country, as is the case with many Russian FDIs. Another option is to increase the company's bargaining power, since the lobbying capabilities of TNCs are usually greater than those possessed by national companies due to the former's ability to maneuver their assets geographically.

Investment expansion abroad is carried out in various forms. The two basic ones are the purchase of existing companies (mergers and acquisitions) and investments from scratch (greenfield). However, in the first case, investments are usually made in modernization and expansion.

Please note that financial sources of FDI can be not only transfers of funds across the border, but also reinvestment of profits received locally and even cross-border loans from the parent company to foreign subsidiaries of TNCs. Therefore, reinvested profits and loans from parent companies are included in FDI statistics.

Firms where a foreign investor owns 10-50% of shares (shares) are called associated, and firms where there is at least 50% control are called subsidiaries. They are independent legal entities, but TNCs can create their branches abroad (they do not have a legal entity) and foreign representative offices (they have the right to a very limited range of operations). All of them are often called foreign affiliates, or more precisely, enterprises affiliated with TNCs.
But the affiliation of these firms to the ultimate owner is not always clear - after all, even several parent TNCs may be backed by the same owners, who, together with their foreign branches, can act as virtually a single diversified conglomerate (an example could be the Ukrainian Privat group) or as a group of truly independent companies, united only by family ties (for example, more than a dozen Indian TNCs of various industries, owned by different members of the Tata family clan). An additional difficulty when analyzing the owners of TNCs is the growing use of offshore companies, holdings and special purpose entities (vehicles, SPV/SPE) to control them.

In addition to TNCs in the traditional sense, in recent years more and more FDI has been carried out by various private equity funds. On the one hand, they establish control over the acquired companies, acting as TNCs, and on the other hand, they make transactions for reasons that are more characteristic of portfolio investors. Thus, direct investment funds usually buy assets for a period of 3-5 years, and even the reorganization of enterprises and their restructuring ultimately pursue one goal - the resale of assets to make a profit.

Close to them are sovereign funds created mainly by Asian countries and usually at the expense of part of the official gold and foreign exchange reserves of certain countries in order to invest these assets abroad in profitable long-term investments, including direct ones (gold and foreign exchange reserves themselves are invested only in low-risk portfolio investments - see chapter 35). Although sovereign wealth funds currently account for less than 1% of the world's FDI stock because they are more likely to make portfolio investments, there is great interest in them because the motives for their direct investment are markedly different even from those characteristic of almost a thousand large state-owned TNCs that have invested for abroad there is an order of magnitude more funds. In the case of sovereign wealth funds, concerns have been raised about the close connection of their FDI with the foreign policies of the respective states.

Activities of TNCs in Russia

Russia, like many other European countries, began to be actively involved in cross-border direct investment flows at the end of the 19th century, but the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 interrupted this process. It cannot be said that the dominance of a planned administrative-command economy with the absence of large private enterprises and foreign economic relations monopolized by the state completely excluded the USSR from international capital migration, but the country lagged significantly behind many states in terms of the degree of economic transnationalization.

Foreign TNCs in Russia

Throughout almost the entire Soviet period, the access of foreign TNCs to operate in the Russian market was severely limited (for example, by the scope of concessions during the NEP or the creation of joint ventures in 1989-1991) or completely closed. A significant step towards liberalizing the activities of TNCs in Russia was the adoption in 1991 of the Law “On Foreign Investments in the RSFSR”, and then the Federal Law of 07/09/1999 No. 160-FZ “On Foreign Investments in the Russian Federation”, corresponding to modern ideas about FDI. In particular, it provides foreign investors with a national legal regime (that is, equal to that in force for Russian companies). However, as in the rest of the world, there are exceptions from the national regime for foreign investors, mainly in the areas of defense, security and mining, which is enshrined in the federal law of April 29, 2008 “On the procedure for making foreign investments in business entities with strategic importance for ensuring the country’s defense and state security.”

In the late 1980s - early 1990s. In our country, high expectations were associated with foreign TNCs for the transfer of knowledge and modernization of the domestic economy, but at the same time, the participation of foreign investors in privatization was greatly limited. As a result, in the 1990s. The scale of FDI in Russia was relatively small compared to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, but in the last decade the situation has changed radically and Russia has become and still remains one of the world leaders in FDI inflows. If, according to the Bank of Russia, in 2000, accumulated FDI in the country amounted to only $32 billion, then by the end of 2012 it grew to $498 billion, second in volume only to FDI accumulated in the United States, leading countries EU, China and Brazil.

Until now, the motives for conquering the relatively large Russian sales market are dominant among foreign TNCs. True, with all the existing restrictions (which have even intensified in recent years), the extraction of raw materials has also attracted significant foreign investment.

In general, the role of foreign business varies greatly among individual sectors of the Russian economy. At the same time, quantitative estimates (for example, the share of FDI in the total volume of investments in the industry or the share of foreign firms in terms of product sales) do not always provide an adequate picture, since leading foreign TNCs can, through competitive pressure, significantly transform the industry even without significant investments. Nevertheless, the list of leading Russian firms controlled by foreign investors is in many ways indicative. More than 30 companies from various countries have sales volumes in Russia exceeding 50 billion rubles. (see Table 4). Foreign business has made a significant contribution to the development of Russian telecommunications and network trade, and in recent years, assembly plants of Western European, American and East Asian concerns have greatly transformed the domestic automotive industry. A key role belongs to foreign TNCs in the Russian tobacco industry; their importance is great in some sectors of the food and chemical industries. The importance of foreign subsidiaries in the Russian banking business and electric power industry is gradually growing.

Table 4
Leading Russian companies under the control of foreign investors

* In 2011, 50% of the shares belonged to BP, since 2013 under full Russian control.
** In mid-2013, 56% of the shares, including 48% of voting shares, belonged to the Russian Altimo, but in 2012 more than 50% belonged to foreigners, primarily Telenor, which now owns 33% of the shares, in including 43% of voters.

Transnationalization Index

When analyzing TNCs, the concept of “transnationalization index” is used, which comes in two types.

The company transnationalization index reflects the degree of involvement of a particular TNC in the production of goods and services abroad. It is calculated as the sum of three values: the share of assets abroad in the total assets of a TNC, the share of sales abroad in the total sales of this corporation, the share of personnel abroad in the total number of personnel of this TNC. In 2003 The transnationalization index of the world's 100 leading TNCs averaged 56%, although for many TNCs it was much higher, especially for TNCs from small and medium-sized countries.

The country transnationalization index assesses the importance of foreign multinationals for a particular country. It is calculated as the sum of four values: the share of foreign direct investment in all capital investments of the country, the ratio of foreign direct investment accumulated in the country to the country's GDP, the share of branches of foreign corporations in the production of the country's GDP, the share of those employed in these branches in the total number of employees in the country. Small developed countries and territories are the most transnationalized. In 2002 these were Hong Kong (82%), Belgium and Luxembourg (77%), Ireland (69%), Singapore (60%). The remaining countries were less transnationalized - Estonia (39%), Hungary (30%), Canada and Spain (21% each), Russia (19%), USA (18%), Japan (1%).

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The Growth Competitiveness Index (GrowthCI) measures an economy's ability to achieve sustainable growth over the medium term...

Development of a strategy for the transnationalization of Russian enterprises

The current stage of development of the world economy, the dominant trend of which is the globalization of economic processes, is also characterized by significant changes in the structure and directions of world economic relations. On the one side...

Development of a strategy for the transnationalization of Russian enterprises

Today in the world, more than 80% of global commodity turnover, over 50% of global industrial production are controlled by world-famous corporations. They also own more than 60% of the patents, licenses for new equipment, technologies...

Economy of South Korea

The index of involvement in the world economy (globalization, information space, international affairs) is measured annually by Foreign Policy magazine for 62 countries, home to 85 percent of the world's population...