[487] ..... A multinational enterprise is a business that has investments outside its home nation-investments that are managed and controlled (or where there is the potential for management and control). Capital transfer is embodied within the extended firm, not transfered to an independent entity abroad. A rudimentary multinational may have simply a sales branch abroad, a minor presence outside its home nation. We define the multinational activity as that of a firm extending over the national frontier. A full-fledged, modern multinational can have operations in over a hundred countries, some of which operations are themselves multiplant and multifunctional and which may have no trade connections whatsoever with the parent firm. There is a process, a growth of business enterprise. In the early stages, stakes abroad were smaller, less extensive, less complex, than at a later time. The modern multinational enterprise, as we know it today, began in ebryo in the middle of the 19th century, but it seems more legitimate to date its origins from the last decades of the 19th century