Politics: The Basics, 4th Edition

the small Central American country of Belize has less than 1 per cent
of the revenue of Toyota. Such figures are greatly affected by inter-
national currency and market fluctuations as a comparison with
previous editions of this book will demonstrate.
In addition many of these corporations control vital economic
resources such as oil (the ‘Seven Sisters’: Exxon, Texaco, BP, etc.),
banking (Bank of America, HSBC, ING) and computing (Microsoft,
Intel and IBM). In some cases the world price of an entire commodity
may be under the control of a multinational enterprise (e.g. De Beers
and diamonds).
Virtually all multinational enterprises are clearly based in one host
country, with the majority of shareholders and senior personnel from

SYSTEMS 43

Table 2.1 Multinationals and countries compared

State or company Revenue or GNI Company national

($ billion) headquarters

USA 12,913

Japan 4,976

Germany 2,876

UK 2,273

China 2,169

Brazil 662

Wal-Mart 349 USA

Royal Dutch Shell 319 Netherlands

Indonesia 282

BP 265 UK

Portugal 181

Toyota 179 Japan

Malaysia 126

Allianz 125 Germany

UBS 105 Switzerland

Colombia 105

PetroChina 68 China

Bangladesh 67

Guatemala 30

Jamaica 9

Sources: Compiled by the authors from World Development Indicators Database, World Bank,

April 2007 and the Forbes Global 2000, February 2007

GNI = Gross National Income