Chequered Boards Available to Purchase

INTERNATIONAL COMPANIES tend to be larger than national ones, but I think the real distinction between the two is likely to be one of complexity rather than sheer size. In an international company the decisions that have to be made by the board may be individually no weightier, but the factors that affect the decision‐making process will certainly be more numerous. For every country in which the company operates, or considers establishing a business, there will be a separate set of factors—economic, political and social, for example—to consider. Often there is interaction between these sets of factors, and at any point in time their relationship can be radically changed by a single new factor with international implications, such as the ‘Nixon package’. All this makes for complexity of organization, finance, investment planning and personnel development.