A barrage of geopolitical disruption in the last five years has only hastened the appetite among some of the world’s fastest-growing companies to expand internationally, new research has found.
Global trade has been put through the wringer since the COVID-19 pandemic, which itself caused massive upset to supply chains worldwide. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine hit input costs and shut off a key consumer market for multinationals. Conflicts in the Middle East, and the linked disruption in the Red Sea, were the latest reminders of the fragility of long-standing supply links.
The landscape of future global trade brings few certainties either. The first month of the Donald Trump administration in the U.S. has brought fresh threats of steep tariffs, leading major companies to reconsider where they manufacture and who they sell to.
Add to that headwinds in once-reliable consumer markets, notably China, and the appeal of expanding internationally looks much lower than it once was.
It might come as a surprise, then, that some of the world’s fastest-growing companies expect most of their revenues to come from overseas markets by 2030, according to a new study by HSBC.
The report found that 69% of companies with revenue between $18 million and $5 billion expect most of their turnover to come from overseas markets in the next five years.
Rather than slowing down their international ambitions as uncertainty mounts, businesses view international expansion as a key way to derisk from that uncertainty, according to HSBC.
“Despite all the noise you hear about the global landscape, companies are trading and increasing trading,” Vivek Ramachandran, head of HSBC Global Trade Solutions, told Fortune from the bank’s headquarters in Canary Wharf.
There also aren’t many signs that fast-growing companies are changing their behavior based on the political developments in the U.S., suggesting Trump 2.0 won’t have major impacts on trade.
“Companies don't seem to be trying to link their business decisions by linking up to political cycles as much, because many of these companies are figuring out the medium, longer term,” said Ramachandran.
There are clear obstacles to expanding internationally, with domestic competition near the top of the list. Indeed, the emergence of domestic Chinese competitors in the manufacturing sector serves as a cautionary tale for that expansion.
However, businesses in the U.K. are showing signs of engaging in “nearshoring” by trading with geographically and politically aligned nations, mainly in Europe.
Ramachandran said: “U.K.-based companies are still trading more with the continent, and not always because the opportunity is the largest, but it feels the most accessible. And so geographic distance still seems to be a barrier in terms of expansion.”
