The golden rules of global business

Abstract

If we look at the foreign direct investment by Japanese enterprises in a single year, the 2006 JETRO White Paper on International Trade and Foreign Direct Investment gave a total of $45.461 billion, which had increased by 46.8% from the previous year and 57.3% compared to 2003. Toyo Keizai Inc’s Directory of Japanese Companies Abroad, indicated that in 2004 there were 4100 Japanese invested companies with 19,815 local subsidiaries; the figures expanded in 2006 to 4130 and 20,680 respectively. This directory is based on research data for the previous year, hence the principal companies in 2005 grew by 0.7% from 2003, with an increase of 30 companies in two years, and the local subsidiaries by 4.4% with an increase of 865 companies in the same period. It should be pointed out that a simple comparison between numbers of companies and corporations and foreign direct investment (FDI) does not accurately demonstrate a correlation since the numbers include companies that withdrew from FDI.