Foreign investments in Ukraine: organizational forms and entrepreneurs in the development of industry and urban infrastructure (the second half of the XIX-th – the beginning of the XX-th century)

Abstract

The evolution of foreign equity mutual corporations, reorganization of private concessions into municipal partnerships, trading houses and foreign partners in domestic partnership, the features of business, economic policy, financial chances for modernization of Ukraine development have been analyzed and revealed in the article. Activities of foreign companies and entrepreneurs in the modernization development of the second half of the XIX – early XX centuries acquired various organizational forms of joint-stock companies (joint stock companies and partnerships in shares) and trading houses (full partnerships and joint ventures). Joint-stock companies and trading houses facilitated the transition to new forms of business management, namely the organization of holding groups among specialized or multidisciplinary companies in various industries. In the metallurgical, mining, coal, metalworking, chemical, electric power, construction materials, trade, and municipal industries, various forms of investment, placement of shares and bonds abroad, and bank credit were used. Private-individual enterprises that owned workshops, factories, branches, warehouses, representative offices with different amounts of funds, production, number of workers, staff, is one of the most problematic in the classification of organizational and legal form. During this period, the first municipal enterprises actively emerged, displacing foreign concessions, which were a new economic phenomenon in the Ukrainian lands. Given the shortage of investment resources of the private sector, their emergence was considered a progressive trend in the infrastructural development of the urban economy, market transformation of regional finances, expanding the economic powers of local governments.