Tag: Chinese multinationals

Chinese Multinationals: New World Leaders

FORESIGHT

For the last 30 years, the world’s economy has been stimulated by China’s domestic economic growth. In the next 10 years, that stimulus will be Chinese multinationals’ extensive activities to build foreign empires. Chinese corporations protected from international competition in China’s domestic markets are now rapidly penetrating foreign markets. Since the Chinese government maintains a level of authority over every Chinese corporation—state-owned or not, every move by a Chinese corporation in a foreign market provides the Chinese government an additional presence overseas. One plausible outcome over the next ten years is that the number of investments by Chinese firms will increase steadily in all the G-20 major economies and stimulate increased global trade from which everyone will benefit. On the other hand, the aggressiveness of the Chinese companies could spark large anti-trade sentiments, create major political and security issues for G-20 governments, and force a variety of protectionist policies to be implemented. In any event, business practices in the next ten years and the business leaders we follow could be defined by Chinese multinationals and their successes.

RECENT SIGNALS OF CHANGE

The key to anticipating possible developments in the future is to focus on recent signals of change—big, disruptive, out of the ordinary changes—in the world.

A new phenomenon in the world is the rapid growth of emerging-market multinationals, particularly from China. Cross-border production, investment, and innovation by multinational corporations have been key drivers in the world’s economic growth since 1990. According to the World Investment Report 2015 by UNCTAD, multinational affiliate sales as a share of world GDP more than doubled from 1990, increasing from 25 percent in 1990 to 50 percent in 2014. At the same time, emerging-market economies are now counterparts on more than half of global trade flows, and the share of Fortune 500 companies based in emerging markets has increased from 5 percent in 1980-2000 to 26 percent in 2015. In some industries, Chinese multinationals are growing while the traditional leaders from the United States and Europe languish. For example, in the telecom-equipment industry, Huawei had 2015 revenue of $58.8 billion, while Cisco ($48.7 billion in 2016) and Ericsson ($27.9 b) created a strategic tie-up, while Nokia ($13.8 b) and Alcatel-Lucent ($15.7 b) merged.

China’s economic boom has stimulated the world’s economy for the last 30 years, but that stimulus is changing quickly.

  • US exports to China quickly rose from $19.2 billion in 2001 to $69.7 billion 2008. With services added, the United States exported $169.2 billion worth of goods and services to China in 2014.
  • Direct foreign investment into China reached nearly $300 billion in direct investment in 2013, but has since leveled off. But Chinese manufacturers are buying more raw materials and components from domestic suppliers, and this maturation is spreading to higher-tech products as well. The portion of foreign inputs in China’s exports has fallen steadily from a high of over 40 percent in 1996 to 20 percent in 2015.
  • At the same time, investment outflows from China have been rapidly expanding; they were approximately $75 billion in 2013, nearly $200 billion in 2015, and probably will be much larger in 2016.
  • Interestingly, China’s dependence on the US market is shrinking as it builds its presence in more foreign markets. Chinese exports to the United States as percentage of China’s economy fell from above 7 percent in 2006 to 3.72 percent in 2015.
  • Still China’s gross exports to the United States are up. Since the rate of US imports as a percent of GDP hasn’t changed much over the years, the exports from other countries (like Japan) to the United States are down.

China is promising to reduce the restrictions on foreign investment and the activities of foreign companies in China. China has a long list of industries in which foreign investment in the country is either restricted or off-limits and where Chinese companies are provided direct support. Time will tell.

  • After two decades Beijing is now considering whether to let Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan Chase operate investment banks in China on their own. Other foreign banks would soon follow. But the opportunity may no longer be that attractive. The closed market allowed China banks to develop large balance sheets, develop close relationships with corporate Chinese clients, and become formidable competitors. Chinese banks had a 10 percent share of investment banking revenue in Asia, excluding Japan and Australia, in 2006; in 2016 that share has increased to 61 percent of a much larger market. Although US banks have invested heavily in the region, their share has declined from 43 percent in 2006 to just 14 percent in 2016.
  • The China government continues to support state-owned companies in becoming national champions in global industrial markets, even if those companies remain inefficient and showing signs of getting worse. In September 2016, China’s two largest steelmakers, Baosteel Group and Wuhan Iron & Steel Group, or Wisco, announced their plans to merge. If the government adds a couple more mills to the merger, the new company will become the world’s largest producer, topping Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal SA. The government expects the new firm to trim excess production capacity and compete in international markets.

Private (non-state) Chinese multinationals grow up in a crony-capitalistic system that shapes their organization, business practices, and foreign growth objectives. They ultimately owe an allegiance to China.

  • In a recently published book, China’s Crony Capitalism: The Dynamics of Regime Decay, by Minxin Pei, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in California, describes how the state decentralized the rights of control over state property to local officials, but left the rights of ownership murky. According to the author, the Chinese state holds the residual property rights of maybe half of the new worth of the China economy. This has led to a system of corruption at every level of the government/economy, an absence of a system of checks and balances, and the motivation of political officials to keep the system in place. In a crony capitalist system it’s awfully difficult for any private Chinese corporation to grow without local politician support; successful corporate leaders learn how to thrive in this environment. All Chinese corporations must grow up playing with a different set of rules than what western corporations grow up playing with.
  • Starting in September 2016, The Wall Street Journal has been reporting on China Zhongwang Holdings Ltd.’s stockpile of one million metric tons of aluminum, worth about $2 billion and representing about 6 percent of the world’s total inventory, that is stored in a remote desert location of Mexico. Zhongwang Holdings could be trying to evade US tariffs imposed by the US Department of Commerce on Chinese aluminum products by routing the products through other countries like Mexico to disguise its origins or do a little product modifying to change the country-origin status.
  • The Wall Street Journal reported in October 2016 that the Dalian Wanda Group and its chairman Wang Jianlin, which acquired Legendary Entertainment in January 2016 and has pending deals to take over Dick Clark Productions and Carmike Cinemas Inc. to become the largest movie exhibitor in the United States, “have close ties to China’s government and Communist Party.”

That’s not to say that China’s domestic market isn’t fiercely competitive. It is very competitive, and the strong competitors that emerge from it could become formidable competitors globally.

  • Didi Chuxing beat Uber Technologies in China to add to Didi’s dominance in China’s ride-hailing market. This is the first country market in which Uber was beat.
  • China’s domestic demand for high-tech products has grown so rapidly that in some markets new products are being developed and introduced first in the world in China. For example, China is leading the adoption of virtual reality. Chinese companies will be able to leverage initial customer sales and experiences to become the market leaders in the G-20 countries they first enter.

Chinese government industrial policy and oversight are becoming more sophisticated. In 2016, China has been making pledges to create a level playing field for foreign and domestic investors. It’s too early to see if the changes will have any tangible effect. Interestingly, China has become a more attractive place to seek legal action for companies that accumulate patents for litigation and licensing purposes. Canadian patent-licensing firm, WiLAN Inc. filed a lawsuit against Sony Corp. recently in Nanjing, alleging that the Japanese company’s smartphones violated WiLAN’s wireless-communication-technology patent. The Chinese government has been strengthening its patent laws and China’s courts have developed rapidly over the years, driven largely by Beijing’s objective to promote homegrown technologies and protect the increasing number of patents Chinese companies own. In China, lawsuits are less time consuming and costly than in the United States—the normal venue for such suits. Germany is another favorite international venue for these suits.

The number of acquisitions by Chinese companies is taking off. The simplest means of developing a competitive position in foreign markets are through acquisition and joint venture/merger with an industry leader. The acquiring company may pay premium, but it can develop a strong market share quickly.

  • While the media industry is closed to foreign companies in China, the movie industry in the United States is not closed to Chinese companies. The Dalian Wanda Group acquired Legendary Entertainment in January 2016 and has pending deals to take over Dick Clark Productions and Carmike Cinemas Inc. to become the largest movie exhibitor in the United States. It already is the largest exhibitor in the world. In October 2016, Jack Ma of Alibaba and Steven Spielberg of Amblin Partners formed a partnership, Holding Ltd., to help Amblin distribute its movies in China and enable Alibaba to become a bigger part of Hollywood’s production and distribution ecosystem.
  • The Chinese conglomerate, HNA Group, that has China’s biggest privately held airline, hotels, supermarkets, etc. has agreed to spend $20 billion this year to buy 25 percent of Hilton Worldwide, the aircraft-leasing arm of CIT Group, the US computer-logistics company Ingram Micro, and the Radisson and Country Inns & Suites chains—some of these deals are pending.
  • A key feature of many Chinese investments in foreign markets is the quid-pro-quo to have an offsetting benefit in China. The HNA Group bought the Hilton stake from the US private equity firm Blackstone Group LP. Is it coincidental that Blackstone Chief Executive Stephen Schwarzman made a $100 million donation in 2013 from his personal fortune to fund a scholarship program modeled after the Rhodes Scholarship to bring 200 mainly US students to China every year?
  • International companies will be open to the new opportunities being developed by the Chinese. General Electric Co. recently announced it wishes to develop new sales in industrial equipment in developing countries by piggybacking China’s push to open more markets to Chinese companies, particularly President Xi Jinping’s initiative, “One Belt, One Road,” focused on roads, ports, and other infrastructure in some 65 countries.

In 2015 Western sentiment of industry leaders and working-class communities is rapidly growing that China’s markets are closed, Western markets are open, and Chinese companies are dumping excess capacity in the West with rock-bottom prices. These actions are then leading to suppressed wages, lost jobs, and company failures in the Western countries. The number of trade remedy cases against China by G-20 members has been steadily rising since 2010. In 2016, trade with China became a hot political issue in the presidential campaign.

Chinese government officials will support Chinese firms in foreign markets, and will act quickly to help Chinese companies facing foreign-government barriers.

  • The UK government approved a contract for Huawei to supply equipment for Britain’s telecoms infrastructure. But recently, the new prime minister, Theresa May, delayed approval of a nuclear power plant to be part-funded by Chinese investment. Xinhua, China’s official news agency, immediately commented that ditching the nuclear plant would create repercussions for Britain and British companies elsewhere.
  • Chinese takeover deals (44 each) in Germany in 2016 so far are worth more than $11.3 billion. That’s more than the previous 14 years combined. Germany’s openness to Chinese investment is changing; German government officials are trying to limit the acquisitions, reviewing proposed acquisitions more closely, and saying no to some. After Germany withdrew its approval on security grounds for a $736 million purchase of German chipmaker Aixtron SE by China’s Fujian Grand Chip Investment Fund LP. Chinese government officials immediately complained about Germany’s protectionist tendencies. German officials then complained about investment reciprocity in China, in effect saying, “We’ve always been open to foreign investment, but you haven’t been.”

Chinese and Indian immigrants are now outpacing those from Mexico in most regions of the United States. In 2014—the most recent year for which data is available—about 136,000 people came to the United States from India, about 128,000 from China, and about 123,000 from Mexico. In 2005 Mexico sent more than 10 times as many people to the United States as China, and more than six times as many as India. Workers are coming to the United States from China because Chinese corporations are expanding in the United States and because employment opportunities in China are changing. Chinese purchases of industrial robots are increasing rapidly as manufacturing labor has become more scarce and expensive. In 2010 Chinese purchases of industrial robots numbered about 15,000 units; in 2015 they were about 65,000 units; and in 2018 they are projected to be about 150,000 units.

PLAUSIBLE DEVELOPMENTS WE MIGHT SEE IN THE FUTURE

Chinese multinationals are poised to rapidly expand in all the G-20 countries. In the next ten years Chinese corporations could become the global leaders—displacing the US and European one—in many industries. Chinese multinationals could replace American multinationals as the face of global capitalism. Given recent signals of change, plausible outcomes could range from a dynamic global trade realm with Chinese multinationals acting as leaders to an ugly global business environment where governments act to support national champions and restrict the opportunities available to foreign competitors.

Globalization

  • By 2030 maybe 40 percent of the Fortune 500 will be based in emerging markets, compared to 26 percent in 2015.
  • There could be a massive shift in control of global markets from West to East.
  • Global trade could continue to grow in the next ten years, stimulated by the wide-ranging activities of Chinese multinationals.
  • On the other hand, globalization trends could stall if Western countries impose major trade barriers and severely restrict the activities of unfriendly-nation multinationals on security grounds. This is very possible.

Chinese Multinationals Going International

  • Chinese commodity producers will lead the way. As the demand for commodities begin to grow again and as prices increase in the next two years, Chinese commodity producers and product manufacturers will expand rapidly into G-20 countries. They will buy existing producers and distribution companies, taking advantage of their weakened financial states because of the commodities slump.
  • Leveraging their protected market positions in China against foreign competition, Chinese multinationals will blitzkrieg the United States and European countries to develop market share rapidly.
  • Chinese companies will operate in any country as long as their staff is reasonably safe and they get paid—North Korea, Russia, South Sudan, Venezuela, the United States, Iran, and Congo—no problem. American and European firms will continue to be limited by national laws, international sanction, and business standards for activities such as environmental management.

East West Competition

  • G-20 multinationals will partner or merge with Chinese multinationals as opportunities arise. Some interesting East-West combinations could result.
  • Chinese companies will challenge and surprise many in a number of global markets. For example, US, German, Japanese, and South Korean firms dominate the global car and truck manufacturing industry. That could quickly change with one or two acquisitions or the emergence of a new type of car manufacturing organization (like Tesla) in China.

Business Climate in G-20 Countries

  • The expat Chinese business community will expand dramatically in G-20 countries.
  • The business culture and competitive practices in G-20 countries will evolve. Just like there’s an evolving Silicon Valley model based on the emergence of the online companies, there will be an East-West model that involves cultural and economic connections to China.

The United States and European Governments

  • The number of proposed deals involving Chinese multinationals that must be approved will increase dramatically in both the United States and in Europe. Individually each deal appears rational and is hard to dispute under the country’s commerce laws, but collectively they suggest structural shifts might occur if they all are allowed to go through.
  • The explosion in number of proposed deals could overwhelm the G-20 government bureaucracies and market regulators. Governments may struggle to review and evaluate the deals in a consistent manner.
  • G-20 countries will dedicate more authority and resources to government offices to manage the growth of Chinese multinationals in their countries. Given the Chinese companies’ inevitable ties to Chinese government officials, security concerns and unfair government subsidies will be most often cited.
  • European Union markets will be particularly vulnerable to Chinese competitors because European competitors are already not dominant in many industries. EU authorities might encourage large foreign investment from Chinese companies or fight it, or do both. Given nationalism trends in the EU, Chinese companies may not be welcome; but given the unemployment problems, outside investment will be very welcome.

China’s Active Government

  • China’s government will actively encourage Chinese multinationals to compete in the largest markets in the world and become global market leaders.
  • At the same time, the China government will actively combat protectionist measures imposed against Chinese corporations.
  • China will continue to use domestic-market subsidies, access to low-cost financing from state-owned banks, etc., and new strategic initiatives like President Xi’s “One Belt, One Road” to help Chinese companies become global leaders.
  • The government will encourage Chinese companies to try and dominate commodity supply chains to protect China’s future access to commodity resources, like the United States has protected the world’s access to Middle Eastern oil.

The Era of the Multinational

FORESIGHT

The world is about to see the greater presence of multinationals, particularly from emerging-economies like China. While resistance to immigrants and foreign companies today is rising in many countries, the overall volume of cross-border flows of products, services, money, and digital information is increasing, and we’re entering a phase where foreign multinationals are going to have more influence on the economic health of every country. Much of the multinational growth will be from Asian companies. National governments will struggle to develop policies for the more dynamic global economy that will encourage the multinationals’ investments in their countries, get them to bring new technologies, products, and services, and yet hold them accountable for their actions, behavior, and negative outcomes. And the governments will make many policy mistakes in accommodating the increased activities. Given the size of the multinationals and the sectors of the economy they shape, mistakes by the multinationals and government policies could be very expensive for everyone.

RECENT SIGNALS OF CHANGE

The role of multinationals in national economies appears to be increasing, and countries are leery of it. Digital globalization and the growth of cross-border supply chain networks are increasing the competitiveness of international companies around the world. Countries are reacting with a range of new policies to the perceived multinational threats and opportunities. Key signals that a new era of the multinational may be coming include:

  • Cross-border production, investment, and innovation by multinational corporations have been key drivers in the world’s economic growth since 1990. According to the World Investment Report 2015 by UNCTAD, multinational affiliate sales as a share of world GDP more than doubled from 1990, increasing from 25 percent in 1990 to 50 percent in 2014. This extraordinary activity of multinationals has transformed the economies of developed and developing countries, changed dramatically where and how commerce is done, and affected the dynamics of local and global markets. When multinationals set up operations in a foreign country, they are taking steps to compete in a local complex, dynamic environment that requires local information gathering, direct access to best-available local resources, and operational decision making to be as flexible as what the local competitors can do. In addition, setting up locally helps avoid trade and regulatory barriers to foreign companies.
  • The McKinsey Global Institute report on digital globalization, published in February 2016, highlighted the dramatic changes in global flows because of cross-border digital data flows.
    • Traditional global flows of goods, services, and finance are generally increasing, but have declined relative to GDP, from 53 percent of GDP in 2007 to 39 percent in 2014.
    • Emerging economies are now counterparts on more than half of global trade flows.
    • But cross-border bandwidth usage increased from 4.7 Terabits per second (Tbps) in 2005 to 211.3 Tbps in 2014, a 45x increase and McKinsey estimates data flows now impact world GDP more than global trade in goods does. This is because digital platforms with their near-zero marginal costs of communications and transactions across borders enable faraway buyers and sellers to find each other and conduct business cheaply and efficiently.
    • A new breed of multinational, the micro-multinational, can now expand overseas quickly and cheaply, enabled by global internet platforms like Amazon, eBay, Facebook, PayPal, and Kickstarter. At the end of 2015, the user bases of Facebook (1,590 million), YouTube (1,000m), WhatsApp (1,000m), WeChat (650m), Alibaba (407m), Instagram (400m), Twitter (320m), Skye (300m), and Amazon (300m) were of the same scale as the world’s most-populated countries China (1,370 million), India (1,314m), United States (321m), Indonesia (256m), and Brazil (206m).
  • Despite the stimulus from increasing cross-border flows, many governments still limit the participation of foreign owned corporations to preserve local markets for local companies.
    • At the recent G-20 summit in China at the beginning of September, China faced much criticism for limiting inward investment while large state-controlled and non-state controlled Chinese companies, the beneficiaries of protected markets, are able to invest freely overseas.
    • In September 2016, J. P. Morgan Chase became one of the few international investment firms approved to operate a wholly owned investment company in China. How long has it taken? This license was issued shortly before the beginning of the G-20 summit on economic matters.
    • Market access/cybersecurity problems produce foreign corporate allies. Microsoft and Chinese company Huawei Technologies just announced their joint support of the EastWest Institute, a nonprofit focused on encouraging open discussions of cyber security issues and new information technology products. Microsoft is facing the antitrust heat from Chinese regulators while Huawei can’t compete for US telecommunications-equipment opportunities because of US government concerns over cyberspying.
    • In August 2016, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., or CFIUS, a Treasury-led panel, gave the go-ahead to state-owned ChemChina’s purchase of Swiss-firm Syngenta, which supplies about one-fifth of the world’s pesticides and about 10 percent of the soybean seeds to US farmers. When completed, this $43 billion deal would be the biggest overseas deal by a Chinese company.
  • In the last ten years, the incomes of most households in advanced economies have been flat or fallen. According to a McKinsey Global Institute report, 65-70 percent of the advanced-economy populations were in groups with flat or declining real income in the period 2005 to 2014. The percentages ranged from 97 percent in Italy, to 81 percent in the United States, to 63 percent in France, and to 20 percent in Sweden. It’s not surprising that social and labor issues are rising in the advanced economies. More immigration and successes of foreign-owned corporations create hot buttons for politicians and government officials to address.
  • The investment opportunities in Europe are so bleak European companies have recently been able to borrow money at negative interest rates. French company Sanofi SA and German company Henkel AG raised more money from bond sales recently than they will have to pay back when the debt matures in a few years. The bonds were priced with a yield of minus -0.05 percent.
  • As the influence of multinationals increases in countries, government resistance to that influence appears to increase as well.
    • European government agencies are trying to protect European markets from being dominated by foreign-owned multinationals. The European Commission recently ordered the Republic of Ireland to collect $14.7 billion in unpaid taxes from Apple. The order appears to be an effort by the European Commission both to force Ireland to increase its low corporate tax rate of 12.5 percent and to grab back some of the cash generated by Apple from sales in the European Union. In another move, the European Commission is planning to propose EU-wide rules to give European publishers new rights to seek payment from online news aggregators like Google.
    • A recent US Treasury white paper claims the European Union’s competition commission is “targeting U.S. companies disproportionately.”
    • Anti-foreign company sentiments work both ways: Volkswagen’s $19.4 billion settlement for its diesel-emissions contraventions is significantly higher than GM’s $900 million fine for concealing an ignition-switch defect tied to at least 174 deaths.
    • Didi Chuxing’s acquisition of Uber’s China business will essentially preserve China’s ride-hailing market for Chinese companies. Uber probably discovered this is the outcome the Chinese government wanted to happen.
  • Governments are advancing proposals to make big business, including multinationals, better citizens where they operate.
    • The US Security Exchange Commission is re-evaluating its disclosure rules for public companies, including whether to require mandatory disclosure of risks related to climate change. A task force of the Financial Stability Board of the G20 countries will soon issue a report with recommendations on how companies in different industries should disclose financial risks posed by climate change.
    • Shortly before she took over as UK’s Prime Minister in July 2016, Theresa May proposed to reform the governance of big business by including employee representation on boards, “I want to see changes in the way that big business is governed. The people who run big businesses are supposed to be accountable to outsiders.” She also called for a protective industrial strategy that would defend important sectors from foreign takeovers.
  • A new phenomenon is the rapid growth of emerging-market multinationals, particularly from China, around the world. Their methods and skills in operating as a multinational vary widely.
    • Wall Street Journal article on September 9, 2016 about a stockpile of one million metric tons of aluminum, worth about $2 billion and representing about 6 percent of the world’s total inventory, stored in a remote desert location in Mexico, that appeared to be owned by China Zhongwang Holdings Ltd., owned by the billionaire Liu Zhongtian. It appeared Zhongwang Holdings was trying to evade US tariffs imposed by the US Department of Commerce for selling aluminum overseas while receiving subsidies in China by routing the aluminum through Mexico to disguise its origins.

PLAUSIBLE OUTCOMES

Much is uncertain about the future for multinationals; many factors will affect their investment and location decisions. A big factor will be the general health of the global economy and the location of new market opportunities. Important factors include how nationalism trends will play out in the advanced economies and what new government policies to open or close domestic markets to multinationals will be enacted. Other factors include how aggressive will state-controlled and private Chinese multinationals be in foreign markets and how will the energy supply and demand situation evolve around the world. Given these factors, the following are plausible but uncertain developments.

  • Markets will increasingly be connected. Despite national governments’ concerns about domestic unemployment and failures to implement new free-trade agreements, global cross-border flows could increase significantly, driven by the ever-expanding global access to the internet and the competitive efforts of multinationals to increase market share. McKinsey’s report on digital globalization estimated cross-border bandwidth usage per year will increase about 9 times in the next five years.
  • Foreign multinationals are going to have more influence on the economic health of countries. In most countries around the world, multinationals will be increasingly important. Their number and penetration of local markets will expand.
  • The dominance of Silicon Valley companies in high tech markets could wane. High-tech emerging-economy companies, particularly from China, will begin to assume market leader positions in several industries.
  • The dominance of natural resource suppliers from advanced economies will be replaced by the dominance of natural resource suppliers from developing countries. See the recent post entitled, “Who Will Do Well After the Global Commodities Glut?”
  • Multinationals will become the world’s experts in resilient or adaptive strategy for complex environments. To compete effectively against multinationals and local companies in tens to hundreds of local markets, multinationals will become increasingly sophisticated in the strategies, governance, and processes for information gathering, decision-making, and execution in dynamic, complex environments. See the recent blog I posted on the US Army’s new doctrine for fighting insurgents in urban environments that is a framework for an adaptive strategy.
  • The era of the multinational may not happen if multinationals can’t handle cyber risks. With the greater dependence on digital networks and systems, multinationals will be continually vulnerable to cyber attacks. Most likely multinationals and governments will both invest significant resources to protect digital data and thwart cyber attacks, and global integration won’t be slowed. But cybercrime will be a major industry, and some multinationals will experience catastrophic losses.
  • The fate of many multinationals will be tied to cyber relationships with their home countries. The cyber relationships between many multinationals and their home country governments will be strong, although often obscure. It will also be hard for many companies to effect digital independence from the home country government.
  • An interesting decision is whether a multinational can or should align themselves with their home-country identity. Some will do so for a variety of reasons, but over time as they grow many will distance themselves from close association with their original home government.
  • Cross-border mergers and acquisitions will be key feature of the global economy as multinationals adjust their portfolios in response to the changing market and government-policy conditions.
  • Due to social unrest and political tensions in North America and Europe, new free-trade agreements will be difficult to pass and implement in the next ten years. The existing global mechanisms for encouraging free trade and discouraging domestic subsidies will be considered effective enough.
  • The number of large financial penalties on foreign multinationals will increase for fraud, human life and property damages, or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time will increase, perhaps substantially in response to political pressures to punish large foreign multinationals taking advantage of the country’s good will.
  • Bilateral relations will be severely tested when one government severely cripples a multinational from another country. Some governments will intervene to protect their multinational and the jobs, tax payments, and other benefits accruing to the country from the multinational’s success. (Can I contract with Russia’s military to hit that country?)
  • Seeing the growing influence of multinationals in their economies, governments could push new policies to make multinationals more accountable for the social costs of their products, services, and operations wherever they operate.
  • Governments could push for global standards or systems for business taxes, environmental regulations, climate change risks, and shareholder, board, and management governance.
  • As European companies struggle to compete with American internet platform companies and new Asian juggernauts for local revenues, European authorities will implement policies to protect local companies, exact large financial penalties on the multinationals, and reduce the influence and dominance of US multinationals.

Who Will Do Well After the Global Commodities Glut?

FORESIGHT

Global commodity markets are beginning to turn around, but the industry leaders could be changing. For the last three years, the global economy has been severely impacted by the oversupply of commodities and dramatic price drops. The large multinational producers have been desperately trying to survive, and if they’re fortunate position themselves strategically for the long, slow recoveries. For commodity producers with money now is the best time to negotiate future commodity-extraction agreements. Countries with low-cost reserves to license will likely have to change their terms to attract new foreign investment. Chinese producers will likely become the new global leaders in many key commodity markets. Anti-trade/anti-foreigner sentiments have been increasing around the world, and these will influence where multinationals go. With the growth of developing-country multinational producers, the trend toward increased transparency of large government commodity agreements could reverse, and corruption levels could worsen. Multinationals from developed countries will be somewhat less active and this will reduce the influence of their countries’ foreign offices around the world.

RECENT SIGNALS OF CHANGE

While commodity cycles and their effects on multinational producers and developing countries are normal, the scale of changes in the down cycles and the reversal of so many large fortunes are catching much of the world by surprise. It appears most commodity markets have passed their worst moments and are now recovering, albeit very slowly: the new cycles are beginning.

  • Many commodity supply leaders—companies with the best-paid management talent—are in serious financial trouble. Why did they get the timing of so many large capital investments wrong? Why were they expanding supply capacity after many years of demand growth, right before the crash?
    • Severe commodity downswings can occur almost overnight. Exports of copper to China in 2015 were half of what they were in 2012, when copper demand was at its peak. In 2015 the equity shares of the large Anglo-Swiss miner and trader Glencore, who has been very active in copper, fell to a sixth of what their value was in 2011.
    • The Spanish renewable energy firm Abengoa SA is struggling to avoid what could be Spain’s largest-ever corporate bankruptcy. It announced in August 2016 that its latest action was to sell five of its US ethanol plants for $357 million.
    • Petrobras is implementing a divestment plan to sell $15 billion in assets to help pay off the company’s very high debt load of $126 billion. In the spring and summer of 2016, Petrobras sold stakes in Argentina and Chile subsidiaries, a large offshore oil field to Norway’s Statoil, and petrochemical unites to Mexico’s Alpek.
  • The global economic slowdown and global commodities slump is also severely impacting an array of large services and equipment supply companies.
    • The mega ocean shippers like the Danish Maersk Line, Dutch Hapag-Lloyd, and China Bulk Shipping have 30% more capacity in the water than cargo. UK marine data provider Vessels Value says that in the five years through 2015, ship owners ordered an average of 1,450 ships annually. This year through July orders fell to 292 vessels. It will take several years before the surplus capacity is scrapped and demand for shipping increases enough. Maersk recently announced it was replacing its chief executive and was looking at splitting the company up.
    • The Union Pacific railroad in the United States suffered an 11% decline in total freight volume in the first half of 2016. Coal volume was down 21%.
    • Samsung C& T, Samsung’s construction arm, has lost at least $700 million in the Roy Hill iron-ore mine in Australia in the last two years. Unfortunately in 2013 before commodity prices began falling, Samsung C& T agreed to take the risk for cost overruns, while committing to an aggressive timeline for when the iron-ore exports would begin.
    • In July 2016, oilfield services companies Hallliburton and Schlumberger announced another round of layoffs of 5,000 employees and 8,000 employees, respectively.
    • Both GE and Honeywell reported in July 2016 disappointing overall financial results because of weak sales of equipment into the energy sector.
  • Emerging-market economies are suffering. Many African countries are in serious turmoil because of the fall in commodity prices and some lessening of support by China, Africa’s biggest trading partner.
    • As of July 2016, 97.1% of Angola’s exports and 92.2% of Nigeria’s were petroleum; about 45% of Angola’s gross domestic product and 35% of Nigeria’s have come from the petroleum sector.
    • An interesting rivalry is developing among China, India, and Japan for relationships with African countries. India and Japan are suspicious of China’s presence and leverage on the continent and they are taking steps to improve their individual positions.
  • Social unrest is increasing in many countries because of the poor economic conditions brought on by the depressed commodity markets.
    • Since the Peruvian president Mr. Humala took office in 2011, 53 people have been killed and close to 1,500 injured in social conflicts in the country, mostly related to commodity-extraction industries.
    • In Nigeria, rebels and unhappy habitants in the Niger Delta are physically attacking oil facilities and crippling the Nigerian government that desperately needs the revenue of oil exports. Their attacks have cut production by 700,000 barrels per day since 2015.
    • In today’s environment, fair elections in Africa’s democracies are difficult to hold as presidents try to cling to power. In Uganda, Congo-Brazzaville, and Burundi the presidents all won flawed elections with the opposition being violently confronted. In Zambia, the loser of the recent election is disputing the result, after a contentious election run up.
  • In a severe downturn, the lowest-cost producers take advantage of their positions as much as possible. They want to keep their operations as busy as they can, not require any worker layoffs or reduced wages, drive competitors out of business or get them to close high-cost plants, and if the opportunities are right, purchase high-quality businesses from companies desperate to sell.
    • In the world steel industry with global oversupply, China, the world’s number one steel producer, has been producing steel at a record pace. China’s first-half exports are up 9% year to year. At the same time, US Steel Corp is unprofitable, cutting thousands of jobs, and idling plants. Germany’s Thyssen-Krupp AG has held talks with Tata Steel of India and others to merge various operations to strengthen themselves. Caparo Industries out of London declared bankruptcy in 2015 for 16 of its 20 businesses.
    • Saudi Arabian Oil (Aramco) is planning an initial public offering to sell as much as 5% of the company for an estimated $100 billion in the next three years.
    • Norway’s Statoil is cutting back its planned capital spending on the giant Johan Sverdrup offshore field to approximately $30 billion from approximately $38 billion so the field remains profitable even when oil prices are low. Statoil continued to push ahead with the project two years ago even after prices had fallen because the field will contribute approximately 40% of the country’s total crude output in the 2020s.
  • In this period of industry restructuring, the international investments of Chinese companies are very important, for the first time in 200 years.
    • Chinese firms have executed about $160 billion foreign takeover deals in the first seven months of 2016, more than any full year on record.
    • In August 2016 a US panel approved state-owned ChemChina’s planned purchase of Syngenta, which supplies about one-fifth of the world’s pesticides and about 10% of soybean seeds to US farmers. If the purchase is ultimately approved by the US and EU governments, it will be China’s biggest-ever overseas deal.
    • State-run State Grid Corp. of China, the world’s largest electricity provider by revenue with $312 billion, is pursuing a takeover of CPFL Energia SA, the Brazilian electric company, for $13 billion. This might be China’s biggest investment in Brazil.
    • On August 30, 2016, Zhongwang, one of China’s biggest aluminum producers, agreed to buy US-based Aleris Corp. for $1.1 billion. Aleris makes rolled aluminum for the aerospace, automotive, and construction industries. The US military is a client for its armored vehicles. There is a glut of steel, aluminum, and other metals in the world largely caused by an oversupply by Chinese producers. Metal exports from China are facing new tariffs and other barriers around the world.
  • As of the summer of 2016, it appears energy and materials commodity prices hit bottom in 2015 and are slowly recovering. The commodity fuel (energy) index of indexmundi.com is up approximately 45% since the beginning of 2016, although it’s still 23% down from the highs of a year earlier. Noticeably, private equity firms are beginning again to invest in oil opportunities. The metals price index of indexmundi.com is up 10% for the year, but still down 15% from a year ago.
  • For the last twenty-five years, the international activities of multinational corporations have been growing rapidly and transforming the global economy. Multinational affiliate sales as a share of world GDP more than doubled from close to 25 percent in 1990 to more than 50 percent in 2014, according to the UNCTAD, World Investment Report (2015).
  • Many commodity producers are reluctant to start new ventures today, even to secure low-cost reserves. Governments facing years of economic difficulties are struggling with how much effort should they apply to save existing ventures (and the jobs), mitigate the impacts of the closed or canceled ventures, and change the incentives to attract new multinational and local investments.
    • Exxon Mobil is not continuing its involvement in a venture to build a new LNG export terminal in Alaska. The project is not forecast to be very competitive in the world. Just a year ago, the Alaska state government paid $65 million for TransCanada Corp.’s 25% share in the overall project that was expected to cost between $45 billion and $65 billion. BP and ConocoPhillips, other shareholders in the venture, are also expressing concerns about the project.
    • An article in the Wall Street Journal on August 31, 2016 about commodity mining in Indonesia highlighted the recent mining asset sales by Newmont Mining Corp. and BHP to local companies and the significant decrease in total mining exploration spending in the country since 2012. In 2012, spending on mining exploration in Indonesia was approximately $450 million and in 2015 it was about $100 million. These changes stem from the heavier government regulations of mining operations and restrictions to foreign investment that Indonesia implemented several years ago when the commodity markets were strong.
  • At a time of a global oversupply of hydrocarbon products, China is reshaping its energy supply and demand mix.
    • China Petroleum & Chemical, or Sinopec, is attempting to double domestic natural gas production in the next five years in order to reduce coal usage in the country and reduce China’s need for imported liquefied natural gas—that many investors around the world were counting on. Sinopec is counting on rapidly expanding natural gas production from shale reserves.
    • US coal exports to China have recently shrunk to almost nothing. They were almost 6 million short tons in 2011, 10 million tons in 2013, and about 300 thousand todate in 2016. Out of seven West Coast export terminals proposed in the past five years, none has opened.
  • In developed countries, wind and solar renewables are really changing the energy supply mix. Will this momentum change with lower hydrocarbon prices?
    • A key signal is that wind and solar renewables are becoming a significant energy source in Texas, the center of the US oil and gas industry. In 2001, renewables (wind, solar, and hydro) accounted for 2% of Texas energy; in 2016 they will account for 16%. One night this past Winter, nearly 50% of the power flowing into the state grid came from wind turbines in the state. Federal subsidies for renewables have been a big factor, but equally big have been the falling costs of solar and wind technology. Besides plentiful hydrocarbon resources, Texas also is rich in wind and sun.
  • While closing or selling high-cost operations, some producers are looking toward technology to help them dramatically reduce their costs. But they need a relatively strong financial balance sheet to do.
    • Shale 2.0. The technology of shale oil production is rapidly advancing despite current cost constraints. Over the last five years, production well productivity has risen more than 400%, 40% in the last year. BP PLC is pushing hard into fracking in the United States to increase its oil and gas, attempting to leverage its capabilities to apply new technologies at large scale.
    • Risk-averse large mining conglomerates, like Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, are investing heavily in automation technologies to help them go to more remote places, dig deeper, and move minerals and metals to the market faster, including very large motorized conveyor-belt systems; supercomputers, drones with fancy remote sensors, and software for building three-dimensional maps of a mine in real time; driverless trucks and trains; and autonomous drilling systems.
    • Mining companies are investing in technology to reduce the costs of producing titanium dioxide and to make this material suitable for 3-D printing. Powdered forms of materials like titanium dioxide are melted layer by layer with a laser to create 3-D objects. The value of the global 3-D printing market is expected to grow to about $6 billion in 2016, up from about $1 billion in 2010.
  • New environmental risks from commodity operations are coming to light.
    • Recent figures indicate that around a third of the annual methane emissions in the United States can be traced to the natural gas industry. While methane doesn’t remain in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide (12 years compared to 500 years), it is about 25 times more potent as a cause of global warming. The Environmental Defense Fund, an American NGO that often works with industry, estimates 2-2.5% of the gas flowing trough the supply chain leaks out.

PLAUSIBLE DEVELOPMENTS IN THE NEXT FIVE YEARS

From my recent blog, Predicting Future Commodity Developments, I noted commodity markets act like complex social-physical environment systems: Most of the time the markets are relatively stable with modest increases and decreases in prices, demand changes, and supply changes around the world. But severe shocks or disturbances to the systems, such as from natural disasters and severe market disruptions can push the systems across their thresholds into different dynamics, often with unwelcome surprises. The recent large downward swings in commodity prices and demand may have pushed many commodity markets over their “stability” thresholds. We can expect in the upcoming few years more disruption and chaos, and new market dynamics to develop. Then a new “stable” market will be the norm. We should look for the signs of new market dynamics and understand them.

Chinese Companies

  • China companies will be the industrial leaders around the world in commodities. They will be the biggest, invest the most money, and generally be aggressive to capture the most market share.
  • The Chinese government will likely support Chinese companies moving abroad with various means of support to help them penetrate foreign markets and avoid trade and tariff costs.
  • In general, transparency of commercial transactions between governments and commodity producers will go down worldwide; corruption levels will increas

Producer and Country Restructurings and Bankruptcies

  • Restructuring of most of the commodity supply chains is not done, not by a long shot. Many operations/countries have just used up their cash and will have to borrow extensively to pay their bills.
  • Sovereign-wealth funds will continue to sell assets to cover national-government expenditures.
  • State-owned companies will continue to add large amounts of debt to pay for large projects that were already underway and to continue selling their high-priced reserves at a loss because prices haven’t recovered enough.
  • Some countries will stop paying on their international loans and require bailouts and restructuring plans from international monetary agencies like the International Monetary Fund
  • International loans for large commodity projects and developing countries will become more expensive.
  • US courts of law will be involved more often in the settlement of large disputes among governments, international companies operating in their countries, and NGOs representing local community interests.
  • EU authorities will attempt to impose a strong rule of law on multinational producers. A number of EU member countries will undermine EU actions to attract foreign investment to their countries and support local interests.

Developed Countries

  • Since many materials are strategic resources for a developed country, dealing with the changes in foreign ownership of commodity producers is a constant challenge because of the political firestorms that accompany them. In the future many cases will involve producers from China and Russia.
  • As the influence of the developed countries’ multinationals wanes, the influence of the developed-countries’ foreign offices/state departments will also wane. The connection points into the developing countries will be fewer.

Developing Countries

  • Many developing countries will reverse many of the foreign-ownership restrictions and contract, royalty, and tax limitations they imposed at the height of the commodity markets and offer new terms to attract foreign and domestic investment.
  • Some countries will try to maintain the tougher conditions on multinationals because of nationalist political pressures and local interests in controlling the country’s resources and spoils.