GlobalData’s deals database looks at mergers, acquisitions and venture capital and private equity investments taking place daily between thousands of companies across the world.

During second half of 2021, deals relating to digitisation accounted for 1.8% of all deals taking place in the sector. This represents an increase from the figure of 0.7% in second half of 2020.

GlobalData's thematic approach to sector activity seeks to group key company information on investments to see which industries are best placed to deal with any issues they may encounter.

These themes, of which digitisation is one, are best thought of as "any issue that keeps a CEO awake at night", and by tracking them, it becomes possible to ascertain which companies are leading the way on specific issues and which ones have some work to do.

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.