Introduction

In recent years there has been mounting interest in foreign direct investments (FDI) and in cross-border agreements between firms. In view of the completion of the European market, external corporate strategies have attracted attention because of their possible effects in terms of competition and competitiveness, both intra-EC and vis-à-vis the USA and Japan. In this respect, the EC Commission has adopted a basically favourable attitude towards mergers and agreements in most industries.

In this chapter an attempt is made to examine, in the case of Italy, how the main features of the process of internationalisation of production towards OECD countries are in some ways related to the issues of competition and competitiveness. The analysis focuses on possible diversity within controlling holdings and the so-called new forms of international involvement (i.e., joint ventures, minority interests and agreements), in that this diversity possibly displays different outcomes in terms of competition and competitiveness. In fact the choice of the ownership structure of the foreign investment relates in a different way to firm, industry and country characteristics which in turn are linked to various market failures and imperfections. We consider that a focus on non-controlling interests (NCI) may contribute to understanding whether the choice of these forms of ownership is unconstrained or not and therefore if they are a ‘last resort’ strategy for companies that, in servicing foreign markets, face hurdles of different kinds and cannot take control of foreign subsidiaries.