Doc. Vlčková and Ing. Smělá participated in the EMGP Project led by Columbia University

The Emerging Market Global Players (EMGP) project is a collaborative effort led by the Columbia Centre on Sustainable Investment, that brings together researchers on FDI from leading institutions in emerging markets to gather original data from company surveys and additional research and produce annual reports based on their findings. Those EMGP reports identify the top multinationals from each of a number of emerging markets, provide detailed information on the key features of the firms’ activities abroad, and discuss other issues, including the underlying policy context influencing outward investment from those emerging markets and the impact of the MNEs on sustainable development. Currently, the project is being moved under the Emerging Markets Institute of Cornell University.

The information in the reports, including the rankings by foreign assets, will be of interest to researchers, bankers, investors, and the media, as well as to multinational firms in many countries.

Doc. Mgr. Jana Vlčková, Ph.D. and Ing. Monika Smělá, from the Department of International Economic Relations, prepared the EMGP annual report for the Czech Republic. 

The top 20 largest Czech MNEs held almost USD 37 billion in foreign assets in 2020. We define Czech MNEs based on ultimate ownership rather than on the company seat as many of the largest Czech-owned and controlled companies have their seat in tax havens. The major MNEs are particularly active in the energy, manufacturing, and real estate industries. The top 20 also include MNEs operating in gambling, software development, and healthcare provision. Many MNEs cover a broad spectrum of activities. Altogether the top 20 largest MNEs have over 960 affiliates in 60 countries. The majority of their activities are in Europe with the most foreign affiliates located in Slovakia (153), which can be explained by the common history of both countries. Germany is right behind Slovakia with 146 affiliates. Neighboring countries such as Poland and Hungary are also important destinations for investment. On average, Czech MNEs had 48 affiliates in 11 countries, but there are significant differences with some companies operating in more than 30 countries and some in only three.

About the Authors

Doc. Mgr. Jana Vlčková, Ph.D. is a member of the Department of International Economic Relations. In 2019 she was appointed associate professor in the field of International Economic Relations. In 2014, she defended her dissertation on Global Changes in Technology Deployment and Innovation with a focus on the EU. At the Department, she lectures on the Geography of the World Economy in English, Economic Geography of China, and Economic Geography of Europe and leads seminars on the subject of World Economy and Regional Markets from a global perspective. In 2019 and 2020, she was a member of the TAČR project research team called Targeting Investment Support in the Czech Republic with regard to the anticipated impacts of technological changes and implements a number of contractual research projects on the topic of innovation and global value chains.

Ing. Monika Smělá is a Ph.D. student at the Department of International Economic Relations and her research focuses on development economics and emerging markets.