Swedish agency for growth policy analysis (Growth analysis) has in accordance with the Act on Official Statistics (SFS 2001:99) and the Appendix to the Ordinance on Statistics (SFS 2001:100) the task of producing and making statistics on international enterprises available. As a part of this work Growth analysis produces an annual report on the affiliates of Swedish controlled groups abroad. This report only presents data concerning groups which have at least one employee in an affiliate abroad, and the data applies to business operations in 2007.

In 2007 there were 1,308 Swedish controlled groups with affiliates abroad, an increase of 40 groups since 2006. The number of employees in these amounted to slightly more than 1.65 million, an increase of 9 per cent over the preceding year. The number of employees abroad increased by slightly less than 111,000 to slightly more than 1.1 million, whilst the number in Sweden increased by slightly less than 20,000 persons to 516,000 employees.

China and Japan were the countries where Swedish international groups increased most. The number of employees decreased in some countries, amongst others, Denmark, Finland, and Norway. The majority of employees in Swedish controlled affiliates abroad are in Europe and America.

Of the 1,308 Swedish groups with affiliates abroad in 2007, 424 groups (32 per cent) had affiliates in Norway. Between 20 and 26 per cent of the groups had affiliates in the other Scandinavian countries, the UK, and the USA. The groups studied accounted for 39 per cent of Sweden's total exports of goods and 22 per cent of imports of goods in 2007.

This report only covers Swedish controlled groups with at least one affiliate and one employee 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. For more detailed information, see the section Methods and Quality assurance.