Global trends of the foreign direct investments- before and after the last financial crisis

The aim of the research was on a basis of an analysis of the statistical data about the flows and stocks of the foreign direct investments in the world to detect the trends with respect to their growth, geographic distribution as well as trends with respect to their components and forms. Further, the aim of the research was to identify how the last economic and financial crises affect the trends of the foreign direct investments. Our expectation was that the last crisis has affected the trends of the foreign direct investments and not only their growth and geographical patterns, but also their components and forms. The analysis of the results of the statistical data show that the trend of growth of before the crises was present in developed, developing and transition economies, but both the inflows and outflows were concentrated in few countries. Actually, the developed countries have domination in this respect. However, the last crises increased the importance of developing countries both as sources and destinations of the foreign direct investments. After the crises the green field investments increased their importance over the mergers and acquisitions as forms of FDI. Also the trend of domination of the retained earnings as a FDI component continued after the crises