Abstract
Harm Schröter posed the problem: What is a “European enterprise” ? Has European integration increased the number of and/or changed the characteristics of European enterprise?1 To seek answers to these questions, it seemed useful to adopt as a handle for analysis an approach common in the study of multinational enterprise, that is to identify the home (where the firm is headquartered) and the host (where the firm does business outside the home), and to introduce a time dimension, comparing earlier periods of European history with the post-World War II years.
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References
Harm G. Schröter, Project Proposal (2004), “Has European Integration created a European Enterprise?”
See, for example, Lawrence G. Franko (1976), European Multinationals (Stamford, Conn.: Greylock), which never describes a “European” firm per se.
For example, Richard Whittington and Michael Mayer (2000), European Corporation (Oxford: Oxford University Press); Franko, European Multinationals; PL Cottrell, Hakan Lindgren, and Alice Teichova, eds., (1992), European Industry and Banking Between the Wars (Leicester: Leicester University Press); Margarita Dritsas and Terry Gourvish, eds., (1997), European Enterprise (Athens: Trochalia Publications); Youssef Cassis (1997), Big Business: The European Experience in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press); and Harm G. Schröter (2005), Americanization of the European Economy (Dordrecht: Springer). There has long been an idea of Europe: Anthony Pagden, ed., (2002) The Idea of Europe: From Antiquity to the European Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Economist, Sept. 3, 2005; New York Times, July 29, 2006; Economist, April 7, 2007.
Economist, April 9, 2005; on the consummation of these plans, Financial Times, June 29, 2005.
On August 1, 1946, SAS Scandinavian Airlines was formed, owned by the existing Swedish, Danish and Norwegian airlines. Ulf Olsson (2001), Furthering a Fortune (Stockholm: Ekerlids), 301. Nordic Bank Ltd. was opened in London in 1971; its founders were Den Norske Creditbank, Oslo, and Kansallis-Osake-Pankki, Helsinki; soon Svenska Handelsbanken, Stockholm, joined, as did a fourth bank Copenhagen Handelsbank. By 1979, the four banks, Svenska Handelsbanken (Stockholm), Copenhagen Handelsbank (Copenhagen), Den Norske Creditbank (Oslo), and Kansallis-Osake-Pankki (Helsinki) were equal shareholders in the Nordic Bank Ltd., London and that year, 1979, they became equal shareholders in Nordic American Banking Corporation, New York (the latter had been founded by Svenska Handelsbanken, Stockholm in 1975). New York Times, Jan. 5, 1971 and May 10, 1979.
A number of these relationships are documented in Paul H. Emden (1937), Money Powers of Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London: S. Low, Marston). Was Lazard Frères “European” ? The American partner was critical throughout most (albeit not all) of the firm’s history.
Gianni Toniolo (1994), One Hundred Years, 1894–1994: A Short History of the Banca Commerciale Italiana (Milan: Banca Commerciale Italiana), 28 (on the parentage of BCI). On the parentage of Paribas, Marc Flandreau and François Gallice (2005), “Paris, London, and the International Money Market,” Youssef Cassis and Eric Bussière, eds., London and Paris as International Financial Centres in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 79.
Irving Stone (1987), The Composition and Distribution of British Investment in Latin America, 1865 to 1913 (1962 diss. New York: Garland Publishing), 90.
On free standing companies, see Mira Wilkins and Harm Schröter, eds., (1998), Free-Standing Company in the World Economy, 1830–1996 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). On Cyprus, Andrea Goldstein (2005), “ ‘Emerging Multinationals’ in the Global Economy: Data Trends, Policy Issues, and Research Questions,” OECD Development Center, unpublished paper, 22.
See William Hausman, Peter Hertner, Mira Wilkins (forthcoming 2008), Global Electrification: Multinational Enterprise and International Finance in the History of Light and Power 1878–1978 (Cambridge University Press), on the Swiss holding companies and on a number of multinational enterprises where the “headquarters” was ambiguous, but within Europe. On the Unilever arrangement that persisted until May 2005 when it was replaced by a single board, see Geoffrey Jones (2005), Renewing Unilever: Transformation and Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 367. On cloaking, see, for example, Gerard Aalders and Cees Wiebes (1996), The Art of Cloaking Ownership (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press).
Lutz Alt (1986), “The Photochemical Industry: Historical Essays in Business Strategy and Internalization,” Ph.D. thesis, MIT, 113; for details on the 1964 AGFA-Gevaert merger and the reasons for it, ibid., Chap. 4. In this case, the 1920s “ joint headquarters” was informal.
Alt (1986), “Photochemical Industry,” 127; Agfa website, www.agfa.com, accessed July 30, 2005.
See Wall Street Journal, Sept. 18, 1998 (plans for the spin off), Agfa website, www.agfa.com., accessed July 30, 2005; Wall Street Journal, Mar. 16, 2001; and Hoovers’ Company Records, “Agfa-Gevaert N.V.,” July 26, 2005, accessed July 30, 2005.
On the European clubs and consortia, see Duncan M. Ross (2002), “ Clubs and Consortia: European Banking Groups as Strategic Alliances,” in Stefano Battilossi and Youssef Cassis, eds., European Banks and the American Challenge (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 135–160, esp. pp. 139–140; for background, see Ross, “Clubs and Consortia, 139, and also Joh. de Vries, Wim Vroom, and Ton de Graaf (1999), Worldwide Banking: ABNAMRO Bank 1824–1999 (Amsterdam: ABN AMRO Bank NV), 364–367.
Details are in Mira Wilkins (in process), “The History of Foreign Investment in the United States, since 1945.”
Herman Van der Wee and Monique Verbreyt (1997), The Generale Bank, 1822–1997 (Tielt, Belgium: Lannoo), 394.
Monique Verbreyt (1997), The Generale Bank, 1822–1997 (Tielt, Belgium: Lannoo), 394 Ibid. and European Association for Banking History (1994), Handbook on the History of European Banks, ed., Manfred Pohl (Aldershot: Edward Elgar), 31, 386.
See Wilkins (in process), “The History.”
Ibid. For example, the European American Bank (the successor to the EABC and the EABTC) went in 1991 under full ownership by ABN AMRO. Mira Wilkins (Summer 2005), “Dutch Multinational Enterprises in the United States: A Historical Summary,” Business History Review 79: 253–254. ABN AMRO would sell European American Bank to Citibank in 2001.
On the boom period, World Investment Report 1992, pp. 254–255; on the cutbacks, Financial Times, Feb. 5, 1999; New York Times, Jan. 18, 2003; and Business Week, July 4, 2005.
Leo Sloan (2005), “Airbus Industrie,” unpublished paper, notes that EADS was formed in 2000, combining French and German interests, while Airbus followed in 2001, which was owned 80 percent by EADs and 20 percent by BAE Systems. See Economist, Oct. 28, 2006, 67, on the sale by BAE.
William Woodruff (1967), Impact of Western Man (New York: St. Martin’s Press), 154, indicates that 8.75 percent of UK investments, 39.2 percent of French investments, and 21.25 percent of German investments were in Europe (outside the home country) at the eve of World War I. These are total foreign investments, not foreign direct investments. For Europe as host compared with the rest of the world in 1914, see Geoffrey Jones (2005), Multinationals and Global Capitalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 23. I believe, based on my own research, that the existing foreign direct investment figures underestimate the amount invested in Europe (outside the home country) by companies domiciled in European countries in 1914. I am not yet ready to revise these figures, however.
Based on Mira Wilkins (1970), The Emergence of Multinational Enterprise: American Business Abroad from the Colonial Era to 1914 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press), 110.
The percentage is based on foreign direct investment stock figures, given in World Investment Report 2006, 303.
We do not have the percentage, but since US direct investments in Europe in that year were $1,059,443 million, $3,671,850 million or 78 percent was from countries other than the United States. This sum ($1,059,443 million) was 22 percent of the $4,731,293 inward investment in Europe. The US foreign direct investment stock data are in Survey of Current Business, September 2006, 122.
Survey of Current Business, September 2006, 122. These are year end position figures on an historical basis. The percentage was slightly lower than in 2004, when fully 52.8 percent of US outward direct investment was in Europe. Survey of Current Business, September 2005, 152.
World Investment Report 1991, 33.
Ibid.,34, 96. In terms of inward flows, as distinct from stock measures, in 1987 the EC was the “dominant investor in Germany and the Netherlands and holds an equal share with the United States in the United Kingdom.” Ibid., 96.
World Investment Report 2000,35.
Ibid.
Wilkins (2005), “Dutch Multinational Enterprises.” On the other hand, Keetie E. Sluyterman (2005), Dutch Enterprise in the Twentieth Century (London: Routledge), 225, found that after 1985, the main focus of Dutch investment shifted “back to Europe.” The European share increased from 34 percent in 1985 to 50 percent in 2000.
World Investment Report 2000, 110 (for the list). Viewed from 2005, how different the picture looks. For example, Orange was acquired by France Telecom in 2000 for $46 billion and Scottish Power would divest PacificCorp in 2005. World Investment Report 2000, 110 (MannesmanOrange); World Investment Report 2001, 244 on French Telecom’s acquisition of Orange. On the Scottish Power reversal, see Scottish Power, Proposed Sale of PacifiCorp, Letter from the Chairman, June 30, 2005. In 2006, in a cross European transaction, the Spanish company, Iberdrola made an offer to buy Scottish Power. Iberdrola and Scottish Power, “Recommended Cash and Share Offer for Scottish Power PLC by Iberdrola, S.A.” Nov. 28, 2006.
World Investment Report 2006, 273.
On the merger, Miami Herald, July 23, 2005; Economist, Mar. 6, 2004; and Goldstein, “Emerging Multinationals,” 98.
Vassilis Pesmazoglou (1997), “The European Union and the Firm: Modes of Interaction,” in Dritsas and Gourvish, eds., European Enterprise, 285.
Gourvish, eds., European Enterprise Ibid., 286.
See Mira Wilkins (1986), “Defining a Firm: History and Theory,” in Peter Hertner and Geoffrey Jones, eds., Multinationals: Theory and History (Aldershot: Gower), pp. 80–95, and Hubert Bonin, Yannick Lung, and Steven Tolliday, eds., (2003), Ford, 1903–2003: The European History, 2 vols. (Paris: P.L.A.G.E.), wherein there a discussion of Ford “firms” in Europe — parts of a multinational enterprise, but subject to separate historical analysis (firms within firms).
Alan Rugman (2005), The Regional Multinationals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 240.
The World Investment Report 1991, argued that during the 1980s, the European Community had increased in importance in the Triad in its outward foreign investments: so much intra-European investments had taken place that it was “possible to conceive of the region as a single, integrated home and host region for foreign direct investment to the rest of the world.” World Investment Report 1991, 33.
Wilkins (1970), Emergence of Multinational Enterprise; Mira Wilkins (2001), “The History of Multinational Enterprise,” in Alan M. Rugman and Thomas L. Brewer, ed., The Oxford Handbook of International Business (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 6; Mira Wilkins (2005), “Multinational Enterprise to 1930: Discontinuities and Continuities,” in Alfred D. Chandler and Bruce Mazlish, eds., Leviathans: Multinational Corporations and the New Global History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 51–79. See also Alfred Chandler (1977), Visible Hand (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press) and his (1990) Scale and Scope (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press) and Jones (2005), Multinationals, 20. This “classic model” (sometimes called the “American model”) was not always the case; there were variations, as, for example, with free standing firms, which provided a different pattern of multinational development. Wilkins and Schröter, The Free-Standing Company.
See, for example, Stephen J. Kobrin (2005), “Multinational Corporations, the Protest Movement and the Future of Global Governance,” in Chandler and Mazlish, eds., Leviathans, 221, and Kobrin’s contribution to the Oxford Handbook of International Business, 184
This was the view of Charles Wilson, Charles Kindleberger, and Rondo Cameron. See citations in Wilkins (2005), “Multinational Enterprise to 1930,” 47ns. 7–8.
Wilkins (1970), Emergence of Multinational Enterprise, 3.
Karl Moore and David Lewis (1999). Birth of the Multinational: 2000 Years of Ancient Business History — From Ashur to Augustus (Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School Press).
The remarks, made at a conference in 1999, are quoted in Wilkins (2005), “Multinational Enterprise to 1930,” 47n.5.
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Wilkins, M. (2008). Europe as Home and Host to Multinational Enterprise. In: Schröter, H.G. (eds) The European Enterprise. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74038-4_3
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