Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction: multinational enterprise
- 2 History, the social sciences and economic ‘theory’, with special reference to multinational enterprise
- 3 The changing form of multinational enterprise expansion in the twentieth century
- 4 Electrical research, standardisation and the beginnings of the corporate economy
- 5 The nature of multinationals, 1870–1939
- 6 International price maintenance: control of commodity trade in the 1920s
- 7 Financial operations of US transnational corporations: development after the Second World War and recent tendencies
- 8 Multinational enterprise – financing, trade, diplomacy: the Swedish case
- 9 Foreign penetration of German enterprises after the First World War: the problem of Überfremdung
- 10 International industrial cartels, the state and politics: Great Britain between the wars
- 11 Vickers and Schneider: a comparison of new British and French multinational strategies 1916–26
- 12 J. & P. Coats Ltd in Poland
- 13 Multinationals and the French electrical industry, 1889–1940
- 14 The Japanese cotton spinners' direct investments into China before the Second World War
- 15 Mitsui Bussan during the 1920s
- 16 Japanese business in the United States before the Second World War: the case of Mitsui and Mitsubishi
- 17 The state and private enterprise in the United States–Latin American oil policy
- 18 Transnational corporations and the denationalization of the Latin American cigarette industry
- 19 Summary: Reflections on the papers and the debate on multinational enterprise: international finance, markets and governments in the twentieth century
- Index of names
- Index of firms
- Index of subjects
7 - Financial operations of US transnational corporations: development after the Second World War and recent tendencies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction: multinational enterprise
- 2 History, the social sciences and economic ‘theory’, with special reference to multinational enterprise
- 3 The changing form of multinational enterprise expansion in the twentieth century
- 4 Electrical research, standardisation and the beginnings of the corporate economy
- 5 The nature of multinationals, 1870–1939
- 6 International price maintenance: control of commodity trade in the 1920s
- 7 Financial operations of US transnational corporations: development after the Second World War and recent tendencies
- 8 Multinational enterprise – financing, trade, diplomacy: the Swedish case
- 9 Foreign penetration of German enterprises after the First World War: the problem of Überfremdung
- 10 International industrial cartels, the state and politics: Great Britain between the wars
- 11 Vickers and Schneider: a comparison of new British and French multinational strategies 1916–26
- 12 J. & P. Coats Ltd in Poland
- 13 Multinationals and the French electrical industry, 1889–1940
- 14 The Japanese cotton spinners' direct investments into China before the Second World War
- 15 Mitsui Bussan during the 1920s
- 16 Japanese business in the United States before the Second World War: the case of Mitsui and Mitsubishi
- 17 The state and private enterprise in the United States–Latin American oil policy
- 18 Transnational corporations and the denationalization of the Latin American cigarette industry
- 19 Summary: Reflections on the papers and the debate on multinational enterprise: international finance, markets and governments in the twentieth century
- Index of names
- Index of firms
- Index of subjects
Summary
The basis of contemporary transnational corporations (TNC) presents capital export in the form of foreign direct investment (FDI). Capital export from the USA began at the end of the nineteenth century and in 1897 had reached $600m. Until the First World War it was growing at about 9% a year. In the period between the two world wars the capital export growth rate slowed down. Nevertheless after the Second World War it accelerated again (in the 1950s and 1960s to about 10%, in the 1970s to 11% a year), the main form of private foreign investment becoming direct investment. In this period capital export was already closely connected with TNCs' global strategy. TNCs became typical international monopolies of the day, integrating and controlling within the framework of one complex all phases of the reproduction process.
Between 1946 and 1964, 187 US industrial corporations (belonging to the 500 largest corporations of the USA) have founded or acquired about 60% of existing affiliates abroad. These constitute the basis of contemporary international monopoly complexes, taking advantage of international specialisation and co-operation of production. At the same time US foreign investment began to be directed to industrially developed countries, and this trend intensified in the following period. While in 1950 48.6% of US FDI was directed to industrially developed capitalist countries, in 1960 the figure had increased to 59.2%, in 1970 68%, in 1975 73.2% and in 1983 75%.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Historical Studies in International Corporate Business , pp. 69 - 76Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989