Railway equipment and technology multinationals are far more likely to establish subsidiaries in Asia-Pacific than the average multinational company according to analysis of GlobalData’s exclusively compiled subsidiary database.

Companies establish subsidiaries for a variety of reasons: they can allow them to expand into profitable new markets, to increase revenue, and to diversify their holdings to better manage risk. As a vital component to a company’s expansion plans, the establishment of a subsidiary can offer insight into investment trends, with our database allowing you to see these investment patterns on a wider, sector level.

GlobalData’s multinational company database – which can be viewed in full on our sister site Investment Monitor – contains information for 2,188 of the world’s top multinational companies (MNCs) by revenue. Of these MNCs, 52 are in the railway equipment and technology industry, representing 2.4% of the companies in our database.

These railway equipment and technology companies are less likely than average to establish subsidiaries in North America (13.9% vs 27.8%) and are more likely to establish them in Asia-Pacific (43% vs 21.4%).

Overall, the 52 railway equipment and technology MNCs in our database operate 3,010 subsidiaries. This comes to an average of 57.9 subsidiaries per company, compared to an average of 99 for the entire database of 2,188 companies. It should be noted, however, that the number of subsidiaries is by no means evenly distributed within the sector. The most common number of subsidiaries for an MNC in the sector (the mode) is six, while the median comes in at 34.5, indicating that the simple average is skewed heavily by the bigger parent companies.

Denmark-based DSV Panalpina AS has the largest number of subsidiaries among railway equipment and technology sector MNCs within our database with 402. This means it ranks in 124th place across our entire database when measured by the total number of subsidiaries.

DSV Panalpina AS’s subsidiaries are distributed across the world with 36.3% of the total located in Western Europe, the highest for any region. Some 21 of DSV Panalpina AS's subsidiaries are located in the Netherlands, while Denmark was the second most popular destination with 19.

After DSV Panalpina AS, Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corp had the second largest number of subsidiaries within the railway equipment and technologies industry MNCs in the database with 256, while Kuehne + Nagel International AG was third with 221 and Yunda Holding Co. Ltd. was fourth with 212.

Overall, 1,517 of the subsidiaries owned by the railway equipment and technologies MNCs in the database were located in the same country as the parent company was headquartered. This meant that MNCs in the sector were more likely than average to have a preference for domestic subsidiaries at 50.4%, with the figure for the entire database standing at 45.7%.

GlobalData has compiled a list of top MNCs based on revenue. Any top companies that did not have a subsidiary were removed from the list. The latest company annual reports (2019 and 2020, where available) and websites were analysed for a total of 2,188 companies.

For a subsidiary to be included, the parent company had to have a majority ownership/control in the subsidiary. Affiliates, associates, joint operations and joint ventures were included as long as the ownership criteria was met. Subsidiary information was captured at a country level. Country names were standardised. In total, 216,898 subsidiaries were captured.