Large companies form the bedrock of the modern U.S. economy. By efficiently combining ideas, labor, capital, materials, marketing, and management, large U.S. companies deliver innovative products and services for their customers. In doing so, they also create value for their employees, their suppliers, their shareholders, their communities, and society at large. Collectively they employ millions of U.S. workers, purchase billions of dollars per year of goods and services from smaller U.S. businesses, return billions of dollars in dividends each year to U.S. shareholders, invest billions of dollars per year in local U.S. communities, and pay the majority of U.S. business taxes.
To create this value at home, large U.S. companies must remain continually engaged abroad. They vie with firms in other nations for talent, capital, supplies, and market share on a daily basis; they manage complex global supply chains to create products and services that satisfy customers’ needs; and they coordinate operations to efficiently deliver these products and services to customers around the world.
To compete in this global marketplace, U.S. companies rely on an array of financial products and services, including cash management services, foreign exchange services, large loans, and debt and equity offerings. These financial products and services provide critical infrastructure for modern multinational companies — essential tools that facilitate key business operations (e.g., investing in research activities, purchasing equipment and software, building new plants and buildings, and processing sales transactions).
Large U.S. banks are often uniquely positioned to deliver this critical infrastructure. They have the scale needed to meet the financial needs of U.S. companies of all sizes. They also maintain operations in markets around the world, providing globally engaged U.S. companies with the truly global reach needed to quickly expand into new markets. Finally, they offer a diverse portfolio of products and services, providing U.S. companies with a convenient “one-stop-shop” for their financial needs. As a result, large U.S. banks frequently serve as trusted partners to globally engaged U.S. companies, helping them grow, sustaining their competitiveness, and providing economic benefits, both at home and abroad.
This paper examines the value that globally engaged U.S. companies create for the U.S. economy and the extent to which they rely on large U.S. banks to meet their financial needs. The analysis relies on fresh quantitative and qualitative evidence, including:
- A recent analysis by PriceWaterhouseCoopers regarding the contributions of globally engaged U.S. companies to the U.S. economy;
- A new survey of Business Roundtable CEOs regarding their companies’ use of financial products and services; and
- A collection of real-world examples provided by Business Roundtable companies describing how they have used products and services provided by large U.S. banks in order to help them better compete in the global marketplace.
Based on these new sources of data and information, Business Roundtable CEOs find that:
- Globally engaged U.S. companies are critical to the U.S. economy, generating 54 percent of private sector gross domestic product (GDP) and supporting 71.2 million jobs.
- Globally engaged U.S. companies use U.S. banks of all sizes, but they particularly rely on large U.S. banks to facilitate their global operations.
- Large U.S. banks are likely to become increasingly important to the success of globally engaged U.S. companies in the future.