You are the manager of an MNC considering an expansion into a new geographic market. Your management training tells you that foreign investments are risky and cost-intensive in terms of coordination and management of a foreign workforce. You will present a proposal stating why you think an expansion into this country has the potential to make the firms’ owners/shareholders richer (or explain why it would not). You can choose the industry and firm-specific characteristics of your company.
Where to get information
Information can be obtained from websites provided throughout your text as well as any official website for your country or any other reliable source of information for international data.
Structure of paper
The paper is meant to be a concise summary of key risk factors. The suggested format is a 2-4 page introduction, a 3-5 page summary regarding financial factors, a 3-5 page management section, and then a 2-3 page conclusion section. It is easy to minimize the amount of writing by summarizing key financial, economic, and risk characteristics data into a table and referring to it in the paper. All tables, exhibits, and supporting documents should appear in the appendix and should be referred to in the paper itself. In total, the paper should be 10-20 pages maximum. You should provide citations and references when appropriate.
I. Introduction
a. Brief Introduction. Identify your country and its characteristics – form of government, population, per capita income, economic characteristics (inflation, GDP growth, debt service, trade balance, etc), language, religion, major cities, climate, and trade block membership.
b. Recent news events related to your country
c. What is the economic outlook? Are there wage and price controls? What are the laws concerning hiring or firing? Is there a black market?
d. What is the physical infrastructure like? How extensive is the local distribution network?
e. How stable is the government? Are there insurrections, war, or civil unrest?
f. What is the level of political corruption?
g. What are the characteristics of this market that would make it attractive and/or unattractive to a US firm?
h. How developed is the legal system? Is there reasonable protection of property, including intellectual property?
i. Are there human rights issues related to entering this market?
j. How is the country liberalizing? How is the liberalization effort taking form?
k. What US multinationals, if any, operate in this country?
l. What industries are most lucrative for market entry? What type of company do you recommend for this market?