In 2013 there were 2,831 Swedish controlled enterprise groups with affiliates abroad, an increase of 203 groups since 2012. Of these enterprise groups 865 or 31 per cent had subsidiaries in Norway. Between 18 and 20 per cent of the enterprise groups had subsidiaries established in Finland, Denmark and USA.

The number of employees in the Swedish controlled enterprise groups with affiliates abroad amounted to 1.79 million, a decrease of 1 per cent over the preceding year. The number of employees abroad decreased by 19,524 to 1.25 million and the number in Sweden slightly decreased to 536,395 employees.

The largest decreases in individual countries took place in the US where the number of employees in the Swedish controlled groups decreased by 10,901 and in Finland, where the number of employees decreased by 5,603. Swedish controlled enterprise groups increased their number of employees in a few countries, in China their number of employees increased by 5,385 and in Latvia by 3,427 employees. The countries where Swedish enterprise groups had their largest number of employees were US with 186,554, Germany with 100,117 and China with 85,878 employees.

The majority of employees abroad were in groups with at least 5,000 employees in Sweden. The 22 enterprise groups with at least 5,000 employees in Sweden accounted for about 60 per cent of all employees in foreign countries, and 42 per cent of employees in Sweden.

In this year’s report the variable turnover is for the fourth time included for the Swedish groups with affiliates abroad. The total turnover abroad for year 2013 was 2,610 billion and total turnover in Sweden was 1,817 billion. The countries where the Swedish groups had their largest percentage of their foreign turnover were US with 14 per cent followed by Germany 12 per cent and Norway 7 per cent.

This report only covers Swedish controlled groups with at least one affiliate abroad. The data is based on the annual reports of the groups, and is available from the Swedish Companies Registration Office (Bolagsverket). A group is defined as Swedish controlled, if 50 per cent of the group head, at the top of the group structure, is controlled by Swedish institutional controlling units.