Dramatic change!

Richard Dobbs

Emerging markets are changing where and how the world does business. For the last three decades, they have been a source of low-cost but increasingly skilled labour.

Their fast-growing cities are filled with millions of new and increasingly prosperous consumers, who provide a new growth market for global corporations while much of the developed world faces slower growth as a result of aging. But the number of large companies from the emerging world will rise, as well-...This powerful wave of new companies could profoundly alter long-established competitive dynamics around the world. Our research shows the emerging economies’ share of Fortune Global 500 companies will probably jump to more than 45% by 2025, up from just 5% in 2000.

That’s because while threequarters of the world’s 8,000 companies with annual revenue of $1 billion or more are today based in developed economies, we forecast an additional 7,000 could reach that size in little more than a decade — and 70% of them will likely come from emerging markets...To put this shift in the balance of global corporate power in perspective, remember that many of the world’s largest companies have maintained their current status for generations: more than 40% of the 150 Western European companies in last year’s Fortune Global 500 had been founded before 1900.

From “Urban world: The shifting global business landscape"