Talk:Multinational corporation

1930 "start date"

Doesn't the "1930" "start date" look a bit late in the light of this from the BP article?

"In May 1901 William Knox D'Arcy was granted a concession by the Shah of Persia to search for oil, which he found in May 1908. This was the first commercially significant find in the Middle East. In 1909 the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was created to exploit this find. The company grew slowly until World War I when its strategic importance led the British Government to acquire a controlling interest in the company and it became the Royal Navy's chief source of fuel oil during World War I.

"In 1917, the war allowed it to take the British arm of the German Europaische Union, which used the trade name British Petroleum. After the war ended the company, in which the British Government now had a 51% interest, moved to secure outlets in Europe and elsewhere. but its main concern was still Persia, following the Anglo-Persian Agreement of 1919 the company continued to trade profitably in that country."

Robin Patterson 02:26, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Or this:

In 1905 Nestlé merged with the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company. By the early 1900s, the company was operating factories in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Spain. World War I created new demand for dairy products in the form of government contracts. By the end of the war, Nestlé's production had more than doubled.

Robin Patterson 02:32, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Surely the debate should start with colonial nations (primarily Britain and Netherlands) with tea and spice trading and the East India Trading Company, Hudson Bay Trading etc

Dead link

TNCONLINE.net^does not exist anymore

Microsoft

Does MS belong here? Most of people work in Redmond, Washington, US. They have some labs outside US, they have support center in almost every country but I guess they would be only happy to get rid of them if possible. Does multinational == big? Pavel Vozenilek 01:58, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

My understanding is Multinational means offices in multiple countries... those support centers make it a multinational company. Graniterock 00:43, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

My understanding is that multinational implies large, formerly independent units in many countries. That MS has localisation and call centers doesn't fit the picture that much. (Someone had also added Google who doesn't have even these, AFAIK.) I think huge steelmakers/car manufacturer/food processors/etc are better examples. Pavel Vozenilek 19:42, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

MS and Google do not just have call centers, they do business in these countries, get sued and sanctioned by the governments of these countries, and follow different laws in every single one of these countries. If that isn't multinational I don't know what is --Alterego 19:56, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

I agree... the act of doing significant business and having a presence in other countries makes it multinational. I'm still trying to to research the transational thing. It has to do with not having a cetralized head office. Microsoft would be multi-national because it is clearly based out of the US. A transnational company is much more decentralized often purchasing services from contractors rather than owning them directly. This way, the company is not directly responsible for the contractors - they can cut themselves off and fluidly move into another country rather than having to face the legal rammifications. Graniterock 20:58, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

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