Internationalization by state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) after the 2008 crisis: Looking for generalizations

This paper seeks to detect (post) crisis tendencies in the international activities of state-owned enterprises (SOE) and sovereign wealth funds (SWF) and identify the main challenges posed in exploring this topic. In doing so it draws on the inductive approach and qualitative method and discusses available studies on recent internalization trends in SOEs and SWFs. The number of SWFs worldwide has been rising since 2008, despite the 2008 crisis which brought heavy losses and negative publicity that caused a rerouting of funds towards domestic purposes. The long-term perspective adopted by SWFs is expected to make less vulnerable to financial market volatility, which should stimulate FDI. SOTNCs are a minority among SOEs in general, i.e. only a fraction of SOEs worldwide can be labeled as state-owned transnational companies; and no exceptional impact of the 2008 crisis is apparent in their functioning The review of selected literature and UNCTAD survey reports is the basis for our conclusions and suggestions for future research avenues.