Ownership and Control of Foreign Operations

An excellent example Is Friedman Wolfgang G. and Beguin Jean-Pierre , Joint International Business Ventures in Developing Countries. New York: Columbia, University Press, 1971.

See for example Tomlinson James W. C. , The Joint Venture Process in International Business. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1970.

Stopford John M. and Wells Louis T. , Managing the Multinational Enterprise. London: Longman, 1972, Part II.

Stopford and Wells , op. cit., Table 10–1.

Franko L. G. , Joint Venture Survival in Multinational Corporations. New York: Praeger, 1971.

For the purposes of analysis, absolute control was deemed to include equity holdings of 95–100%. Also, 50–50 joint ventures were included in the minority category.

For a fascinating account of the reasons for this share issue, see Reader W. , Imperial Chemical Industries: A History, Vol. Two. London: Oxford University Press, 1975.

Note that much of the United States data were computed for the immediate parent links in the chain. Fortunately this complication is probably slight, because most U.S.-based MNC's have shorter chains of ownership than the British. Nevertheless, as in all such comparative work, care must be taken to recognise that legal practices differ without necessarily implying differences in management practice.

Stopford and Wells , op. cit., Figure 9–2.

For an excellent summary see Vernon Raymond , “Foreign Enterprise and Developing Nations in the Raw Materials Industries”, American Economic Review, 60, 2, May 1970.

For an account of the reasoning that led to this consortium, see “Giving Africa its own bottles”, Financial Times, October 10, 1975.

South Africa is included among the developed Commonwealth in view of its past membership and the fact that the country's published per capita income figures do not accurately portray the development of the white community.

For an examination of this bias and its incidence in various industries, see Stopford J. M. , “Changing Perspectives on Investment of British Manufacturing Multinationals” in Dunning J. H. (ed.), Methods of Servicing Overseas Markets (forthcoming).

Despite many gaps in the data on affiliates' size, those for the largest are considered reasonably complete. Precise figures were obtained for 115 and reasonably close approximations were provided by companies themselves for the remainder. Even so, a few large affiliates may have slipped unnoticed through the net. Extractive firms were excluded from these calculations, because of the difficulty of obtaining accurate figures for the affiliates' turnover.

Measured respectively by R&D expenditures of more than 5 per cent of turnover and by advertising expenditures of more than 2 per cent of turnover.