UN World Investment Report 2010 - Office of Trade Negotiations

CHAPTER I Global Trends in FDI 17
I.5). This relative resilience might be explained
by the fact that foreign sales started
to pick up again in the latter half of 2009.
In addition, many TNCs are thought to have
slowed their downsizing programmes as
economic activity rebounded – especially
in developing Asia. In spite of the setback
in 2008 and 2009, an estimated 80 million
workers were employed in TNCs’ foreign
affiliates in 2009, accounting for about 4
per cent of the global workforce.
Dynamics vary across countries and sectors,
but employment in foreign affiliates has been
shifting from developed to developing countries
over the past few years (chapter II); the
majority of foreign affiliates’ employment
is now located in developing economies. 28
The largest number of foreign-affiliate employees
is now in China (with 16 million
workers in 2008, accounting for some 20
per cent of the world’s total employees in
foreign affiliates). Employment in foreign
affiliates in the United States, on the other
hand, shrank by half a million between 2001
and 2008.
In addition, the share of foreign affiliates’
employment in manufacturing has declined
in favour of services. In developed countries,
employment in foreign affiliates in the manufacturing
sector dropped sharply between
1999 and 2007, while in services it gained
importance as a result of structural changes
in the economies (OECD, 2010).
Foreign affiliates’ assets grew at a rate of
7.5 per cent in 2009. The increase is largely
attributable to the 15 per cent rise in inward
FDI stock due to a significant rebound on
the global stock markets (section A).
The regional shift in international production
is also reflected in the TNC landscape.
Although the composition of the world’s top
100 TNCs confirms that the triad countries
remain dominant, their share has been slowly
decreasing over the years. Developing and
transition-economy TNCs now occupy seven
positions among the top 100. And while
more than 90 per cent of all TNCs were
headquartered in developed countries in the
early 1990s, parent TNCs from developing
and transition economies accounted for more
than a quarter of the 82,000 TNCs (28 per
cent) worldwide in 2008 (fig. I.12), a share
that was still two percentage points higher
than that in 2006, the year before the crisis.
As a result, TNCs headquartered in developing
and transition economies now account
for nearly one tenth of the foreign sales and
foreign assets of the top 5,000 TNCs in the
world, compared to only 1–2 per cent in 1995
(table I.6) (see http://www.unctad.org/wir
for the list of the 100 biggest TNCs).
Other sources point to an even larger presence
of firms from developing and transition
economies among the top global TNCs. The
Financial Times, for instance, includes 124
companies from developing and transition
economies in the top 500 largest firms in the
world, and 18 in the top 100. 29 Fortune ranks
85 companies from developing and transition
economies in the top 500 largest global
corporations, and 15 in the top 100. 30
Figure I.12. Number of TNCs from
developed countries and from
developing and transition economies,
1992, 2000 and 2008
(In thousands)
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
92%
8%
21%
79%
28%
72%
1992 2000 2008
Developing and transition economies
Developed countries
Source: UNCTAD.
Note: Figures in the bar show a distribution
share.
Over the past 20 years, TNCs from both
developed and developing countries have
expanded their activities abroad at a faster