Basic actors of the System

5.1. Transnational company is a basic subject in world economy

Having examined the modern forms of countries integration as well as the origin of the very Starting with consideration of the key elements forming the fundamental basis of the global economic relations such parties as independent states, multinational integration treaties, international organizations and transnational corporations can be deemed as traditional actors of the World Economy. Each time period refers to the particular economic and political conditions under which the aforementioned actors may gain additional benefits or fall in recession and get weaker than before. Independent states are considered as integral and most traditional actors of the World Economy that keep enormous economic and political power inherited from the post-WWII era. Despite of the fact that independent countries typically have certain specific attributes of own sovereignty in possession (e.g. armed forces and police, legislative system and courts etc.) which differentiate them from the rest of actors an opinion can be found that modern states still have much in common with large enterprises mainly from standpoint of applied governance techniques and key economic objectives. For the purposes of classification independent states can be divided into several groups judging to socio-economic conditions and level of income per capita since such indicators still differ much nowadays. Conclusion of integration treaties as well as consequent formation and enhancing of respective institutional basis in course of rapid transition of several multistate groups to advanced integration phases (e.g. the European Union with current achievement of Monetary Union phase) may allow us to assume that the role of integration treaties (both currently existing and newly founded) will become more serious due the expectations of stronger transfer of power from particular states to the supranational level of integration groups formed by such states. International economic organizations as actors of the World Economy are known to be active in field of coordination and execution of activities which require substantial efforts of numerous states in order to influence particular processes of find necessary solutions for certain problems of the World Economy. Such prominent institutions as the International Monetary Fund, group of the World Bank and broad range of entities under the frame of the United Nations represent the outstanding contribution of international economic organizations to progress of the World Economy and International Relations. Appearance of transnationalization as a process of widening the corporate business activities through rapid expansion of national corporations to the foreign locations with relevant transfer of capital, labor and technologies starting from the second part of XX century resulted in perception of transnational corporations as a new promising trend-maker and key actor. Current considerable power of the transnational capital can be proved by the fact that leading transnational corporations are able to compete easily with particular emerging economies in terms of annual cash inflows (it means that annual sales of the transnational corporations are close to the amounts of gross domestic product as created by particular emerging economies). Impressive institutional basis, subsidiaries, production and trade facilities, logistics chains in numerous states, thousands of employees across the world should be taken into consideration in course of discussion regarding transnational capital. In majority of cases it takes rather long time for a company to grow up to the scale of the transnational corporation while an average entity usually crosses several steps including a strong regional actor and nationwide actor before successful transformation to the global actor. In addition to the evident benefits (taxes, jobs) that presence of transnational companies provides to their national strongholds or origin countries, it has also been frequently seen as a matter of national pride due to the fact that transnational corporations still continue to support economic interests of origin counties in worldwide operations. Nevertheless, one has refrained from overestimation of transnational corporations’ activities since negative effect especially in their relations with emerging economies also draws attention of the global community. Negative consequences of interaction between transnational companies and less-developed countries deal with imparity in relations between global corporate actors and rather weak political regimes and civil society institutions in aforementioned states. Needless to say that in the worst cases such situation may result in perception of emerging economies as subordinated markets or suppliers of natural resources, raw materials and cheap workforce. In their turn, emerging economies need interaction with transnational capital as in high case it may provide sources of direct investments ensuring sustainable economic growth of these countries.

However, one of the key objectives which shall be fulfilled by national authorities in order to avoid negative impact of interaction is maintaining of transparency, strictest compliance with statutory national legislation and international treaties signed, legal (to the extent possible) exclusion of transnational business from participation in domestic political processes. Traditional expansion of transnational corporations from well-developed states to the emerging markets since the end of the XX century has been also supplemented by opposite direction i.e. expansion of growing transnational companies having emerging markets origin to the markets of the well-developed states. As an example we may find that the latter companies are highly active now in field of international M&A transactions (one of the key tools for transformation into transnational business) with enterprises from the European Union countries and North American states being frequent targets for acquisitions. We may expect that in the nearest future transnational corporations from such states as the Peoples’ Republic of China, India, Brazil and Russia will become strong enough to compete with existing global corporate actors.

TNCs have got both advantages and disadvantages (table 11).

Table 11

Advantages and disadvantages of TNCs

Advantages	Disadvantages
- ability to realize global project - most skilled staff (highly qualified) - low transaction costs - huge income - an access to new technologies - investment resources - diversification of production - safer position on the market	- environmental impact (ecological) - the homeland loses on taxes (according to transfer’ prices and location in off-short zone) - competitive environment (no friendly business environment) - cross-cultural communication - hard to manage (not easy to supervise)

5.2. Russian transnational corporations

At the present stage Russian transnational corporations are included in the rankings of the largest companies of the world. The information about Russian TNC is shown in table 10. In the largest gas company Gazprom the state's share is 50.002%. The total amount of capitalization on 30 March 2007 is amounted to 246 billion dollars, i.e. the 6th place in the FT Global 500 ranking [22, p. 109–111].

Table 12

Characteristics of the largest companies in the world in version FORBES (indicators: total market capitalization, sales and profits, assets)

Basic	The largest companies in the world by Forbes 2000
Year	2004 (2005)	2008 (place in 2004)
The number of countries in the ranking / The number of companies in the ranking	50/	60/
The number and the name of Russian companies in the ranking	13 (in 2005– 14) (Gazprom, Lukoil, Surgutneftegaz, RAO UES, Sberbank, Sibneft, Norilsky nickel, Mobile telesystems, Tatneft, Severstal, Vimpelkom, Avtovaz, Mechel)	(Gazprom; Lukoil; RАО UES, Sberbank, Rosneft, Surgutneftegaz, TNC-ВР, Norilsky nickel, Severstal, System JSFC, Transneft, Novolipitsky, Tatneft, Vimpelkom, Magnitogorsky, Mechel, TMC, Uralkaly)

According to: The World Biggest Companies/ Forbes2000 (2008) [27]

Analyzing statistical data on cross-border transactions and purchasing productive assets by Russian enterprises abroad we can make the following observations:

· According to the rate of growth in international operations Russian companies are significantly ahead of the TNCs not only of developing but also developed countries. In recent years, domestic companies have doubled the size of their foreign assets, increased the amount of sales from its international operations more than 2.5 times. In their offices overseas more than 150 thousand people are employed, i.e. twice that in the early 2000's;

· About twenty companies control 40% of all overseas assets (in developed countries the level of the concentration in this area at least twice as less);

· The structure of the foreign expansion of the Russian capital is also of the whole raw materials. In 2007, overseas investments in purchasing of enterprises of machine building and chemical industries slightly increased but the share of these sectors in the total volume of transactions and up to date remains small;

· The presence of Russian corporations in the international market of mergers and acquisitions is still insignificant: their share in the world no more than 2 %.

There are still few companies which are actively developing modern manufacturing and ready to invest in purchasing of high-tech companies abroad. The share of innovative products in the total industrial production of Russian TNCs does not exceed 5–7 % which is 5–6 times less than that of leading international corporations. The most capitalized companies (with the biggest value of ordinary and preference shares) are [37]: «Gazprom» (1 place), oil company «Rosneft» (2), oil company «LUKoil» (3), Sberbank Rossii (4), metallurgical company «Norilskiy nikel» (5). Let’s consider internationalization rate of Russian companies by example of «Gazprom».

Open joint-stock company «Gazprom» positions itself as a global energy company. Its strategic goal is to become a leader among global energy companies by developing new markets, diversifying business activities and securing the reliability of supplies [34]. Gazprom strives to get involved in hydrocarbon exploration, production, transmission and marketing projects in third countries, as set out in its «global presence» strategy for the global oil and gas market, through participation in both bidding procedures and asset swap deals [28]. «Global presence» strategy implementation is shown in Table 13.

Table 13

Implementation of Gazprom’ «global presence» strategy

Country	Form of interaction
Venezuela	In August 2005, Gazprom was announced as the tender winner for Stage A of the Rafael Urdaneta’s project.
Vietnam	The parties have finalized the construction of two offshore exploration wells.
Iran	Gazprom is engaged in stages 2 and 3 of the South Pars field project executed by the consortium comprised of Total (France) – 40 %, Petronas (Malaysia) – 30 %, and Gazprom – 30 %
Kazakhstan	At the moment, the TsentrCaspneftegaz and Kazakhstan continue the construction of exploration well on the Caspian Sea offshore.
Nigeria	On Seprtember 2008, Gazprom and Nigerian Petroleum Corporation signed the Memorandum of Understanding. The document stipulates the implementation of joint projects in geological exploration, hydrocarbon production and transportation, as well as in associated petroleum gas gathering and processing systems engineering and power industry facilities construction in Nigeria.

Gazprom is special for being simultaneously a producer and a supplier of energy resources, as well as for having an extensive resource base and a branchy gas transportation infrastructure. “Gazprom” is the largest extractor of natural gas in the world and the largest Russian company.

In 2008, the Gazprom group produced 549.7 billion cubic meters of natural gas. This amounted to 17% of the worldwide and 83 % of Russian production. Gazprom’s Unified Gas Supply System is the largest gas transmission system in the world. The Group sells gas to domestic customers in Russia, to 25 European countries and Baltic States.

5.3. New actors (players) of the world economy

The turning of the world development to geoeconomical paradigm predetermined in many respects the appearance of the whole spectrum of the newest local structures, which are able to step forth as moving force of this progress. In fact, globalization has formed another world structure. Its basis consists of new «players», new kinds of local systems. In our opinion, the sources of growth are concentrated exactly on this level. The most extensive list of these local systems (strata) is developed in the research works of E.G. Kochetov and E.V. Sapir [10, 23]. The main of them are the following:

GROUP 1: Economic areas (geo-economic regions, free economic areas, industrial areas).

GROUP 2: Transboundary structures of joint management (Geoeconomic «Belt», wandering internationalized reproduction cycles, natural economic zones)

GROUP 3: Centers of concentration of innovative technologies (Intellectual Valleys, Technopolises, Incubators, Technoparks, Technotracks).

GROUP 4: Business-structures of information network origin (Digital Cities, network systems, electronic centers, glocal knots).

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