A bigger world A special report on globalisation September 20th 2008 GGlobalisation.inddlobalisation.indd 1 55/9/08/9/08 116:33:076:33:07 The Economist September 20th 2008 A special report on globalisation 1 A bigger world Also in this section The new champions Emerging markets are producing examples of capitalism at its best. Page 3 Ins and outs Acronyms BRIC out all over. Page 5 The empire strikes back Why rich•world multinationals think they can stay ahead of the newcomers. Page 6 Oil, politics and corruption Bad capitalism carries its own risks. Page 9 The rise of state capitalism Coming to grips with sovereign•wealth funds. Page 11 Globalisation is entering a new phase, with emerging•market Cities in the sand companies now competing furiously against rich•country ones. A new sort of investment partnership. Matthew Bishop asks what that will mean for capitalism Page 12 LOBALISATION used to mean, by and ing cap in hand to the sovereign•wealth Glarge, that business expanded from funds (state•owned investment funds) of Opportunity knocks developed to emerging economies. Now it various Arab kingdoms and the Chinese As long as the protectionists don’t spoil it. ows in both directions, and increasingly government. Page 13 also from one developing economy to an• One example of this seismic shift in glo• other. Business these days is all about bal business is Lenovo, a Chinese comput• competing with everyone from every• er•maker. It became a global brand in 2005, where for everything, write the authors when it paid around $1.75 billion for the of Globality, a new book on this latest personal•computer business of one of phase of globalisation by the Boston Con• America’s best•known companies, IBM sulting Group (BCG). including the ThinkPad laptop range be• One sign of the times is the growing loved of many businessmen. Lenovo had number of companies from emerging mar• the right to use the IBM brand for ve years, kets that appear in the Fortune 500 rank• but dropped it two years ahead of sched• ings of the world’s biggest rms. It now ule, such was its condence in its own stands at 62, mostly from the so•called brand. It has only just squeezed into 499th BRIC economies of Brazil, Russia, India place in the Fortune 500, with worldwide Acknowledgments and China, up from 31 in 2003 (see chart 1, revenues of $16.8 billion last year. But this In addition to those cited in this report, the author is particularly grateful for the insights, many of them o the next page), and is set to rise rapidly. On cur• is just the start. We have big plans to grow, record, of Hal Sirkin, Nandan Nilekani, Alvaro Rodriguez rent trends, emerging•market companies says Yang Yuanqing, Lenovo’s chairman. Arragui, Bernard Charles, Joshua Ramo, Michelle Guthrie, will account for one•third of the Fortune One reason why his company could af• Arjun Divecha, Len Blavatnik, Viktor Vekselberg, Malvinder Singh, Bill Ford, Michael Green, Lord John list within ten years, predicts Mark Spel• ford to buy a piece of Big Blue was its lead• Browne, John Studzinski, Bill Rhodes, Diana Farrell, man, head of a global think•tank run by ing position in a domestic market buoyed Mikhail Fridman, Graham Mackey, Thor Bjorgolfsson, Ram Accenture, a consultancy. by GDP growth rates that dwarf those in Charan, Nabil Habayeb, Diana Glassman, David Rubenstein, Eli Jacobs, Dambisa Moyo, Alastair Newton There has been a sharp increase in the developed countries. These are lifting the and Michael Patsalos Fox. number of emerging•market companies incomes of millions of people to a level acquiring established rich•world business• where they start to splash out on every• A list of sources is at es and brands (see chart 2, next page), stark• thing from new homes to cars to comput• www.economist.com/specialreports ly demonstrating that globalisation is no ers. It took 25 years for the PC to get to the longer just another word for American• rst billion consumers; the next billion An audio interview with the author is at isation. Within the past year, Budweiser, should take seven years, says Bill Amelio, www.economist.com/audiovideo America’s favourite beer, has been bought Lenovo’s chief executive. by a Belgian•Brazilian conglomerate. And The sheer size of the consumer markets More articles about globalisation are at several of America’s leading nancial in• now opening up in emerging economies, www.economist.com/globalisation stitutions avoided bankruptcy only by go• especially in India and China, and their 1 2 A special report on globalisation The Economist September 20th 2008 terparts. Emerging•market rms with ex• Sixty-two, and counting 1 perience of serving these consumers think The new giants 3 Emerging-market companies in the Fortune they are better placed to devise such pro• Ten biggest Fortune Global 500 emerging-market Global 500 ducts than their developed•world compet• companies, 2008 70 itors. Lenovo, for example, is going after Global 500 Revenue BRIC the developing world’s rural markets with Company Country rank $bn 60 Non-BRIC a cheap, customised PC that enables farm• Sinopec China 16 159.3 50 ers to become networked. State Grid China 24 132.9 40 Some of these innovations have global China National China 25 129.8 30 potential. Lenovo’s Chinese R&D labs de• Petroleum 20 veloped a button that recovers a computer Pemex Mexico 42 104.0 system within 60 seconds of a crash, es• 10 Gazprom Russia 47 98.6 sential in countries with an unreliable Petrobras Brazil 63 87.7 0 power supply. Known as Express Repair, Lukoil Russia 90 67.2 2000 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 this is now being incorporated into its Source: Fortune computers everywhere. Petronas Malaysia 95 66.2 The same logic may apply to innova• Indian Oil India 116 57.4 2 rapid growth rates, will shift the balance of tions in business models that allow goods Industrial & China 133 51.5 Commercial business activity far more than the earlier and services to be delivered in fundamen• Bank of China rise of less populous economies such as Ja• tally di erent ways and at much lower pan and South Korea and their handful of cost. Lenovo, for example, has developed a Source: Fortune new champions that seemed to threaten highly e ective formula for selling to Chi• the old order at the time. nese consumers that it has since taken to tional (headquarters far away from new This special report will argue that the India and America. markets) and cultural (old ways of think• age of globality is creating huge opportu• Yet the rise of the new champions has ing)they have advantages too. The great• nitiesas well as threatsfor developed• brought a vigorous response from some of est of these may be a deep well of manage• world multinationals and new champions the old ones. IBM may have felt that it was rial experience, which emerging•market alike. The macroeconomic turbulence that no longer worth its while to compete in rms often lack. Yet Lenovo has shown the world is now going through after al• PCs, but Lenovo is facing erce competi• how to overcome this management decit most a decade of smooth growth will tion from American companies such as by hiring a group of seasoned internation• probably not alter the picture fundamen• Hewlett•Packard and Dell everywhere, in• al executives, including Mr Amelio, an tally, but it will complicate it. Despite all the cluding in China. Nor was IBM’s decision American who cut his managerial teeth at talk of decoupling, emerging economies to sell its (low•margin) PC business due to a IBM and Dell. have recently been growing more slowly lack of commitment to emerging markets: But Lenovo went further than hiring in• because of their exposure to increasingly it now employs 73,000 people in India, ternational managers. We are proud of cautious American consumers. against 2,000 at the start of the decade, and our Chinese roots, says Mr Yang, but we Moreover, high oil and food prices are hopes to increase the share of its global no longer want to be positioned as a Chi• creating inationary pressures in many revenues coming from emerging markets nese company. We want to be a truly glo• emerging countries that had enjoyed years from 18% now to 30% within ve years. bal company. So the rm has no head• of stable, low prices along with extraordi• Although multinational companies in quarters; the meetings of its senior nary economic growth. The side•e ects of developed countries must grapple with managers rotate among its bases around rapid development, such as pollution and legacy costs of various kindsnancial the world. Its development teams are water shortages, also need to be tackled. (pensions, health•care liabilities), organisa• made up of people in several centres After a long period in which globalisation around the world, often working together has been all about labour productivity, the virtually. The rm’s global marketing de• business challenge everywhere, and espe• Lean and hungry 2 partment is in Bangalore. cially in emerging markets, will increasing• Top five emerging-market M&As A huge e ort has been made to inte• ly be to raise resource productivityusing Deal grate the di erent cultures within the rm. fuel, raw materials and water more e• value In all situations: assume good intentions; ciently, says Bob Hormats of Goldman Year Target Buyer $bn be intentional about understanding others Sachs, an investment bank.