5.4Foreign ownership in the Flemish economy

By Yannick Bormans (KU Leuven)

This chapter looked for ‘facts and figures’ concerning foreign ownership within the Flemish economy. A Flemish company falls under foreign control when the ‘ultimate controlling institutional entity’ (UCI) is located in a country other than Belgium. 

We find that 1% of firms display foreign ownership. However, these 1% of firms represent approximately 22% of employment and 30% of gross value added in the non-financial market economy.  

This chapter explores three indicators: the share of foreign ownership in (1) the number of firms, (2) employment and (3) gross added value. We break these results further down by country of origin, sector, technology classification and EU vs non-EU (OECD vs non-OECD).