UN: Foreign direct investment largest since 2000

According to the United Nations' 2007 World Investment Report, published on 16 October, global foreign investment inflows amounted to US $1,306 billion in 2006, which is a 38 percent increase over 2005 and comes close to the record-setting $1,411 billion of 2000.

The UN Conference on Trade and Development ranked the worldâ''s top 100 non-financial TNCs by foreign assets.

Of the top 100 TNCs, 58 belonged to six industries: motor vehicles (11), petroleum (10), electrical and electronic equipment (10), pharmaceuticals (9), telecommunications (9), and electricity, gas and water services (9).

I've pulled out only that small sliver of TNCs that are in the electrical and electronic equipment industry. You can find the full table at the UNCTAD site (be warned: itâ''s a PDF, and youâ''ll find the full table on page 229).

Ranking	Corporation	Home economy	Foreign affiliates
1	General Electric	United States	1184
18	Siemens AG	Germany	877
30	IBM	United States	380
39	Sony Corporation	Japan	233
41	Hewlett Packard	United States	249
44	Philips Electronics	Netherlands	337
66	Hitachi Limited	Japan	356
85	Matsushita Electric Industrial Company	Japan	288
87	Samsung	Republic of Korea	76
92	LG	Republic of Korea	42

With the possible exception of Samsung, these are all huge conglomerates, and some are pretty much cradle-to-grave companies for their products. Some of the biggest names in chipsâ''like Intel, Infineon, AMD and Micronâ''who are not conglomerates are notably absent from the list.

The report estimates that the sales, value added and exports of the worldâ''s approximately 78,000 transnational corporations (TNCs) accounted for 10 percent of world GDP and one-third of world exports.